Risk-based ship design is a new scientific and engineering field of growing interest to researchers, engineers and professionals from various disciplines related to ship design, construction, operation and regulation. The main motivation to use risk-based approaches is twofold: implement a novel ship design which is considered safe but - for some formal, regulatory reason - cannot be approved today and/or rationally optimize an existing design with respect to safety, without compromising on efficiency and performance. It is a clear direction that all future technological and regulatory (International Maritime Organisation) developments regarding ship design and operation will go through risk-based procedures, which are known and well established in other industries (e.g. nuclear, aviation).

The present book derives from the knowledge gained in the course of the project SAFEDOR (Design, Operation and Regulation for Safety), an Integrated Project under the 6th framework programme of the European Commission (IP 516278). The book aims to provide an understanding of the fundamentals and details of the integration of risk-based approaches into the ship design process. The book facilitates the transfer of knowledge from recent research work to the wider maritime community and advances scientific approaches dealing with risk-based design and ship safety.