Survey procedures and class notation harmonization for an effective quantification of passenger comfort

In order to assess passenger comfort on board of cruise ships, Classifi- cation Societies recommend that specific aspects of ship design and layout should comply with a set of suitable criteria, aiming at passengers’ well-being improve- ment during the journey. Rule requirements take into account several environmen- tal aspects such as whole-body vibrations, noise, indoor climate and lighting. How- ever, among Societies and requirements, there is little harmonization with respect to both the environmental aspects which are considered and the breakdown into several comfort classes. Furthermore, the Classification Society, allow for the as- sessment of the different disturbing factors, very data short acquisitions times. This reduces the possibility of understanding the time evolution of the disturbances and the averaging effect of longer acquisition on the transient and variable ships op- eration and activities. The lack of stationarity in the acquired signals may have deleterious effect on the comfort assessment and the ship cabin classification