Disease Spread Control in Cruise Ships: Monitoring, Simulation, and Decision Making

Cruise ships transfer diverse populations between different countries, offering unique travel experiences to thousands of people worldwide. The benefits of cruises in tourism and national economies are apparent; however, the closed environment of cruise ships can easily become an incubator of infectious diseases, spreading rapidly among passengers. Health recommendations and protocols have been issued by proper organizations to enable disease spread control, especially after COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic; however, their effective application by the ship’s crew still constitutes a challenge, considering the application scale. This chapter aims to provide a foundational model toward an automatic system contributing to disease spread monitoring and control in cruise ships. Such a system would contribute to limiting the dependencies on the human factor, and consequently to passengers’ safety. Also, it provides an overview of state-of-the-art disease monitoring and decision-making systems, as well as simulation methods enabling the prediction of disease evolution, considered as components of that model. A summary of research directions and conclusions are derived from the review study performed, offering a useful reference for future research.