During his career as a leading researcher Antonio Simões Ré has gotten used to being presented, incorrectly, as Dr. Simões Ré. SInce he is one of the leading experts in marine safety technology in extreme environments, people naturally assume that this quietly outgoing researcher and scientist is a PhD. It’s a title he brushes off easily and politely as in his introduction at the most recent Ocean Technology Speakers Series presentation.

More than forty researchers, entrepreneurs, academics and public servants turned out at the NRC building on Memorial University Campus, Thursday, 7 Feb. 2013, to network over an informal breakfast before sitting down to hear the guest speaker Simões Ré. The event was co-sponsored by OceansAdvance and the City of St. John’s.

According to Les O’Reilly who introduced him,  Simões Ré is a graduate of Memorial University’s engineering faculty. He also has a degree from the Technical University of Nova Scotia and joined the National Research Council in 1986 and immediately launched into research  marine safety related to the performance of life saving envelopes such as life rafts for vessel evacuation safety. Today as a senior research engineer at NRC, he is just as passionate about his research now as he was then.

Using a PowerPoint jam-packed with images and time lines (CLICK HERE to view) and video footage, Simões Ré provided the audience with an indepth overview of the program for Marine Safety Technologies for Extreme Environments (MSTEE). His comprehensive presentation covered the history of the program from the early days of  ad hoc  projects in the mid 1980’s, such as the Esperanto Capsule to the fully integrated research MSTEE program now in place evaluating and assessing lifesaving appliances destined for frontier regions. He also delved briefly into how results from that research have led to new commercial opportunities.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:118:height=250,width=420]]For Simões Ré the modern era in extreme environment research at the NRC began in the late 1990s. Before that “we did quite a bit of ad hoc work but none of it was coordinated with other projects.” But then in 1998 the marine safety program had its genesis and they began to look at a more co-ordinated program of research. It was then that the NRC implemented three- to four-year research programs that, “really cemented in our own minds what the Extreme Environment Marine Safety Technologies were all about,” said Simões Ré.

That is not to say that their earlier work did not yield results. As an example Simões Ré pointed to the  development of personal locator lights in 1990, initial implementation of the Seascape system, and the origin of the Esperanto Evacuation craft  concept. All of these have gone on to carve out significant space in the commercial market and, according to Simões Ré, the Esperanto is now an international standard for evacuation craft.

DRIVERS FOR MARINE SAFETY RESEARCH
One of the most important drivers for marine safety research in extreme environments is the lack of relevant regulation regarding the performance of marine safety equipment under extreme conditions.

“Currently we test at calm, safe conditions and the assumption in regulations is that this will transfer to extreme conditions,” said  Simões Ré. “But we know that performance declines as conditions worsen until the equipment and systems are no longer safe,” he said, Researchers want to close up that performance gap and ensure that people remain safe in extreme conditions. “The problem is that current solutions are not reliable for extreme conditions and we are looking to moving north. So we need a different approach,” said Simões Ré . Increased frontier offshore and shipping activity in the north makes this research imperative.

MARINE SAFETY RESEARCH AREAS

In developing their criteria for research the MSTEE program is trying to make the changes at the IMO level of performance regulation in Canada. In carrying out this work researchers have three overarching areas into which they direct their marine safety research.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:113:height=246,width=420]]The first broad area of research is systematic technical performance testing of life boats and deployment systems and an analysis of the impact of environmental factors. According to Simões Ré the system must be reliable for all three phases of rescue at sea including escape, evacuation and rescue and that will require a regulatory regime change.

Depending on the sea state the size of the life boat and the size of the support vessel there are a number of potentially dangerous situations that can arise. Other areas for research and lobbying are the regulations which dictate that the same size paddle must be used for a life boat whether it is three metres long or the much larger 15-metre type typically associated with the cruise industry.  “In the larger lifeboat the only thing the paddle might be good for is crowd control,” joked Simões Ré.

Nor is it enough to ensure that the engineering is precise. Research must also take into account the human factors and this is the second overarching area of marine safety research. Their investigations in this are includes regulation of body temperature, motion sickness, motion–induced interruptions, and fatigue. Simões Ré points out that any one or all of these can figure largely in the success or failure of evacuation, survival, and rescue in the marine environment. “We ask not only how does the equipment perform but also what happens to the humans when we put them in these extreme conditions,” he said.  They know, for example, that life rafts capsize in extreme conditions. “The system might work for escape and survival but it has to work for recovery too because if you fail at any stage of this process people die.”

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The third overarching area of research is identifying knowledge gaps and opportunities for innovation to bridge those gaps. According to Simões Ré  these are “to develop an environment combining researchers, graduate and work term students, entrepreneurs and industry that foster innovative application of research to the creation of new products and technique,” Simões Ré said this environment helps to develop the next generation of innovators and leaders in the marine industry. As an example he pointed to Extreme Oceans Innovation (CLICK HERE FOR RELATED STORY) “This is just on example of graduate students who came through our program as students and went on to advance the MSTEE program through innovative thinking and entrepreneurial drive.

THE RESEARCH PORTFOLIO
To deliver its co-ordinated program of marine safety research the MTSEE program includes a multi-disciplinary interconnected team of six researchers and six technical staff all of whom work when required in partnership with universities and private companies.

In thier work the MSTEE team employs four main research tools including numerical modeling, simulation, physical modeling and full scale trials.

“We conduct quite a bit of numerical modelling in collaboration with other companies such as VMT,” said Simões Ré. Among the numerical modeling projects they’ve studied are the performance of escape launches and booms, on life boats in the ice field, on lifeboat towing and on larger life raft flexibility.

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:115:height=284,width=472]]He said that the MSTEE program has employed simulation as a tool to design fast rescue craft, to measure fast rescue craft performance, and to test free fall, among other things.

The physical modelling tool has been employed on such world-class projects as the Terra Nova FPSO before it was built. Simões Ré said they have looked at life raft deployment with fixed installations and with gravity based structures making several significant discoveries. For example, through physical modelling in the wave tank they discovered that “in significant waves the timing for release is critical,” he said, and went on to explain that the optimal deployment must be timed so that the life raft hits the back of incoming waves.

In full scale trials MSTEE towed life rafts ten miles outside St. John’s harbour and operating under existing regulations discovered that, especially for the larger life rafts, where their mass approached the size of the support vessel, towing could become an impossible operation said Simões Ré.  “Any significant wave action caused the life raft to stop in the water.”  [[wysiwyg_imageupload:116:height=253,width=438]]Full scale trials also drove home the importance of including human limitations into the engineering design he said. For example on some lifeboats the coxswain has to turn sideways for long periods of time in order to steer it. And that discomfort is compounded by limited vision and excessive noise levels of up to 110 decibels—all of impeded another of the coxswain’s primary duties: communication with any potential rescuers.

Simões Ré says the MSTEE program delivers a unique and diverse portfolio of marine safety research for clients worldwide. Simões Ré believes their access to the local ocean technology cluster including industry-specific experience, an openness to existing and new partnerships, plus access to world leading infrastructure supports that service delivery. But, according to Simões Ré they can go one better, not only supporting the science of others but also fostering innovation and encouraging student and graduate involvement.

Together MSTEE delivers scientific assessment in four portfolios said Simões Ré: escape, evacuation, survivability, and rescue systems for the international market in marine safety.

The escape portfolio of services includes research that can help make designers aware of protection required for harsh environmental  conditions and generate a workforce database for anthropometric and physical capabilities as they change during workers’ careers. MSTEE can simulate escape environments and build an engineering database for offshore equipment.

The MSTEE program has a long record of research into evacuation. Their available portfolio of capabilities include the development of design criteria for refuge and abandonment areas; evaluation of performance envelopes for life-saving appliances (lifeboats, life rafts, immersion/helicopter suits)in harsh environments; evacuation craft safety (engineering / human safety); performance of evacuation systems in harsh environments, third party verification; and what Simões Ré describes as unbiased review and evaluation of new system designs

[[wysiwyg_imageupload:117:height=260,width=481]]Under the survivability portfolio of research services the MSTEE program investigates human characteristics of survival (in water, in evacuation craft, life rafts, and lifeboats); they establish limits of survivability based on rescue response; they assess the performance of: personal protective equipment such as immersion and transport suits, and of evacuation craft. They deliver realistic training and simulation exercises; they validate new SAR models for survivability and evaluate ergonomic and spatial issues as well as noise, air quality, heat balance, and active ventilation

Equally important as all the other phases of marine safety and survival is the rescue. Simões Ré said that the MSTEE developed research services for this vital phase including performance evaluation of rescue equipment; design criteria for rescue equipment; and collaborative development of concepts for evacuation and rescue craft including remotely operated rescue.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF MARINE SAFETY RESEARCH
“Bringing people home safe and bringing the community together to foster an environment that will create new products and services and make the next generation better than we are,” is the ultimate goal of their research according to Simões Ré. “Young people bring possibility to the table.”

The guiding principles for marine safety research have always been to improve safety of personnel at sea. But in the post-1998 era the marine safety research goals have been better articulated as two aims. First of all marine safety research aims to generate new knowledge and new understanding, so when applied it generates economic and social wealth. “So even as we are trying to generate new knowledge, we are ever hopeful that that knowledge will translate into economic and social wealth,” he said. “In this region there are a lot of mariners and a lot of accidents. So social wealth is very important n Newfoundland and Labrador.” And, said Simões Ré, in their work in extreme environments, they have the added satisfaction of knowing that if it will work here then it will likely work anywhere.

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