To address these challenges, proposals will address one of the following two aspects and cover all of the tasks mentioned.

1. “Infection control on-board large passenger ships – prevention, mitigation and management”. 
   • Establishing a comprehensive scientific basis concerning the effectiveness of different prevention, mitigation and management measures.
   • Developing and demonstrating solutions for improving the prevention, mitigation and management of on-board disease and illness.
   • Cooperate and coordinate with other projects selected from this topic as well as other relevant actions such as the EU’s “healthy gateways” action.
   • Outcomes and data to be made publicly available to facilitate the take up of best practices, also in function of vessel type and size, type of cruise and cruise destination. A distinction should be made between large ferries as typically deployed in Europe and cruise ships.
2. “Healthy ship design”:
   • Applying a bottom-up evidence based approach address the functional and concept design of large passenger ships so as to reduce the on-board spread of infection.
   • Research should in particular address ventilation systems and their airflows, germicidal surfaces and disinfection practices, contamination control in all relevant ship areas, facilitating enhanced quarantine, process separation, the design of social areas including those for the crew, the design of crew work areas, especially pantries, laundries etc.. In this respect a better interaction of people with the vessel and its equipment on the basis of social innovations (e.g. hands-free accessibility solutions) should also be considered.
   • Innovative systems should be addressed to enable early stage detection of the spread of on-board infections such as for example employing AI, big data, smart sensors etc.
   • Cooperate and coordinate with other projects selected from this topic as well as other relevant actions such as the EU’s “healthy gateways” action.
   • Outcomes and guidance concerning healthy ship design should be made available to facilitate the take up of best practices by ship interior designers, shipyards, and equipment manufacturers.