Recommended Procedures for Measuring Underwater Radiated Noise Emissions of Ships

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September 2023 — Canada

Client: Vancouver Fraser Port Authority and Transport Canada

JASCO has provided technical expertise to a collaborative project aimed at developing guidance for ship certification societies wishing to issue quiet ship notations. The guidance document was developed through a series of workshops attended by representatives from the following Classification Societies: American Bureau of Shipping, Bureau Veritas, China Classification Society, DNV, Korean Register, Lloyd’s Register, Registro Italiano Navale. Also in attendance were members of the International Association of Classification Societies and the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO). The expertise and contributions of these representatives and members were instrumental for defining practical, consistent, and technically-sound methods for measuring and reporting underwater radiated noise from ships, suitable for assessing quiet notations.

An accompanying spreadsheet provides quartile levels of ship RNL measurements from VFPA’s ECHO Program database for several ship categories, that can be used to establish reasonable noise limits. The spreadsheet includes scaling parameters to account for different values of vessel speed through water.