Cruise ship — Indoor location for passenger safety and emergency operations
Large vessels, such as cruise ships, operate as true autonomous ecosystems, hosting thousands of passengers and crew members within complex indoor environments. As such, multiple decks, public areas, children’s spaces, and high-risk technical environments require real-time visibility, precise location services, and robust emergency management capabilities. At the same time, these requirements must be balanced with delivering a smooth and enjoyable onboard experience.
In this context, Pole Star provides indoor location solutions specifically designed to address maritime constraints. Concretely, they enable passenger safety, crew protection, and large-scale critical operations management, including in fully disconnected environments or on-premise architectures.
Kids Tracking — Real-time child safety across passenger areas
On large cruise ships, child safety is a critical concern due to the size of the vessels, the high number of passengers, and the complexity of indoor layouts, including multiple decks and dedicated activity zones. Traditional supervision methods alone are not sufficient to guarantee continuous visibility or rapid response.
Pole Star enables real-time kids tracking through wearable BLE bracelets designed for children. These devices allow children to be located instantly across all passenger-accessible areas, with positions visualized on multi-deck indoor maps. Location data is refreshed continuously and made available only to authorized users.
Parents can access their child’s location directly through the passenger application, while onboard teams rely on dedicated supervision interfaces to react quickly when needed. Designed to operate at very large scale, the solution supports thousands of bracelets per voyage, delivering low-latency performance and reinforcing both child safety and parental reassurance without impacting the onboard experience.
CO2 Mustering & Emergency Management in Technical Areas
CO₂-protected zones and engine rooms are among the most critical environments on board vessels. In these high-risk areas, safety procedures require precise personnel localization, instant headcount in the event of an alert, and a controlled, verified evacuation before any activation of the CO₂ system. In this context, having a reliable, real-time and actionable view of human presence is essential to reduce risk and secure operations.
Pole Star deploys a CO₂ mustering solution based on real-time indoor localization. Crew members operating in technical areas are equipped with BLE badges that continuously emit signals captured by the existing onboard infrastructure. Using this data, the location engine accurately computes the position of personnel inside engine rooms and CO₂-protected zones.
The solution enables:
Real-time localization of personnel within protected zones
Automatic and instant headcount of individuals present when an alert is triggered
Dedicated CO₂ mustering dashboards displaying exposure status and evacuation progress
Alert triggering via badge button, enabling immediate escalation in critical situations
Deployed in a fully on-premise architecture, the solution ensures low latency, high availability, and operational independence, meeting the requirements of critical maritime environments.
By providing immediate visibility of exposed personnel, automating headcount procedures, and supervising evacuation progress in real time, Pole Star strengthens control over emergency scenarios and significantly reduces human risk in CO₂-protected areas.
Emergency team tracking & incident response
During emergency situations, intervention teams must be located continuously, mobilized quickly and coordinated efficiently across multiple decks and zones. Pole Star provides real-time tracking of emergency response teams, delivering a live operational view of their positions and movements throughout the vessel.
Centralized supervision interfaces allow safety officers to coordinate actions, monitor response progress and ensure effective deployment of resources. This improves reaction times, coordination efficiency and overall incident management across one or multiple ships.
Special needs assistance & medical alerts
Pole Star also supports medical assistance and alert scenarios for passengers requiring immediate care. Geolocated call buttons allow travelers to request help with precise location information, while access to a defibrillator can automatically trigger an alert.
The exact position is instantly transmitted to onboard medical and response teams, reducing response times and improving the efficiency of medical assistance in public and high-traffic areas, thereby strengthening passenger safety and confidence.
Yard Mustering Management
Real-time safety and team visibility for dry dock operations
Instantly identify who is on board, off the vessel, or at designated muster points
Access personnel profiles: affiliated company, role, and assigned muster point
Quickly verify mustering status and identify missing individuals
Generate attendance logs and safety reports
Asset Tracking
Gas bottles and cages
Bagages
Mobile-based location services
Live Crowd monitoring
- Enhance Guest experience by providing Live Attendance monitoring information, including wait times, popular times, and visit duration.
- Optimize operations and revenue generation by leveraging attendance metrics.
Digital Wayfinding
- Enhance Guest Experience by integrating intuitive wayfinding features that facilitate easy navigation throughout the ship.
Bring-Me
- Enhance Guest experience by sharing guest locations with onboard restaurants and bars to streamline services and elevate the overall dining experience.
Geotargeted ads
- Boost in-app e-commerce & improve ROI with geotargeted communication marketing
A maritime-ready Indoor location architecture
Pole Star’s maritime solutions are built on a fully on-premise architecture, specifically designed to address maritime constraints. As a result, they ensure autonomy, low latency, high availability, and data sovereignty. More specifically, the platform combines NAO® Track for real-time location computation, NAO® Viewer for monitoring and dashboards, as well as real-time APIs integrated into the existing BLE network infrastructure.
Thanks to this architecture, it becomes possible to deploy large-scale indoor location services on large vessels, covering multiple decks and critical areas. Consequently, passenger safety, crew protection, and emergency management are ensured without relying on external connectivity.
→ Discover our Ship Use Cases
