Regulations

The design guideline is developed to ensure adherence to minimum mandatory industry rules and regulations for HMI design. Our vision is that companies that implement the OpenBridge Design Guideline automatically will follow current international rules.

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.

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.

Regulations considered in OpenBridge

In the development of the OpenBridge Design Guidelines the following bridge design guidelines and best practices were taken into account as guiding principles:

International Maritime Organization
International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). Chapter V, Regulation 15: Principles relating to bridge design, design and arrangement of navigational systems and equipment and bridge procedures.

International Maritime Organization
Guidelines on ergonomic criteria for bridge equipment and layout (MSC/Circ.982).  

International Maritime Organization
Guidelines on the Standardization of User Interface Design For Navigation Equipment (MSC.1/Circ.1609) (also known as “S-Mode”).  

International Electro technical Commission
Maritime navigation and radio communication equipment and systems - Presentation of navigation-related information on ship borne navigational displays - General requirements, methods of testing and required test results (IEC 62288:2014).

Note: this is not a comprehensive list of the design guidance obtained or observed by OpenBridge Design Guidelines. For example, for design guidance and regulations of specific marine equipment and/or systems it is necessarily to consult the relevant and specific regulations and performance standards pertaining to each case.