Regulations

OpenBridge and approval

The most well developed aspects of bridge design guidance is the physical infrastructure, including elements of the physical design and layout of the bridge space, its consoles, equipment and generalized guidance on interfaces and input/output devices. However, as systems have become increasingly digitized, there is the need for digital HMI design guidance for designers, which is not well supported in current bridge design guidelines. OpenBridge design guideline adheres to best practices from current maritime design regulations, while advancing industry standards of digital HMI systems.
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In order to implement the design system in real-world ship settings it must be positioned within current and future maritime design regulations, design and approval processes. The OpenBridge Design Guideline is developed in cooperation with relevant policy and classification society stakeholders in order to ensure its content and procedures are relevant and in accordance with approval processes and real-world application. We have carried out analyses of the current mandatory and non-mandatory design guidelines related to bridge HMIs to ensure relevance of the design guideline in relation to ongoing industry and regulatory development.

OpenBridge is still new and in open development. Currently there are no approval process for ensuring that a system is OpenBridge compliant. However, it is likely that we will introduce a voluntary approval process for OpenBridge in order to increase quality in OpenBridge applications and make sure the OpenBridge Design Guideline is applied correctly. Even if the guideline is prescriptive, it requires knowledge of HMI design to apply it correctly.