Overview
Maritime safety is one of the central concerns of the European Commission's transport policy. This notes the extent of losses at sea (currently on average 230 vessels and over 1,000 lives every year), the additional impact on marine pollution and its international dimension. Council Directive 98/18/EC of 17 March 1998 on safety rules and standards for passenger ships (Official Journal L 144 , 15/5/1998, pp.1-115) aimed to introduce a uniform level of safety of life and property on new and existing passenger ships and high-speed passenger craft, when both categories of ships and craft are engaged on domestic voyages, and to lay down procedures for negotiation at international level with a view to a harmonisation of the rules for passenger ships engaged on international voyages. Specifically, this Directive sets out requirements applicable to new ro-ro passenger ships constructed on or after 1 July 1999. For new Class B, C and D ro-ro passenger ships constructed on or after 1 July 1999, escape routes shall be evaluated by an evacuation analysis early in the design process. The analysis shall be used to identify and eliminate, as far as practicable, congestion which may develop during an abandonment, due to normal movement of passengers and crew along escape routes. Including the possibility that crew may need to move along these routes in a direction opposite to the movement of the passengers. In addition, the analysis shall be used to demonstrate that escape arrangements are sufficiently flexible to provide for the possibility that certain escape routes, assembly stations, embarkation stations or survival craft may not be available as a result of a casualty. FIRE EXIT proposes to equip the marine industry with a Ship Evacuation Simulator that is a quantum leap in the level of reliability, realism and design utility of today's ship evacuation software. The FIRE EXIT ship evacuation simulator will be capable of addressing issues of mustering, ship motions, fire and abandonment. In achieving these aims the FIRE EXIT project does not intend to re-invent existing technology. Rather, it will take as its starting point the very leading edge of the current state-of-the-art in ship evacuation simulation, fire simulation and large-scale experimental facilities and significantly enhance these capabilities.
The principal objective of the FIRE EXIT project was to create a ship evacuation simulator capable of addressing issues of mustering, ship motions, fire and abandonment. As its starting point it used the state-of-the-art in ship evacuation simulation, fire simulation and large-scale experimental facilities.
FIRE EXIT addresses six principal areas of investigation:
- the development of probabilistic design methods in the fire risk area consistent with the Safety Case approach and the new fire protection regulations, which specify how safety equivalence may be achieved,
- the development of an interface to CFD software predicting the spread of fire and the creation of a module to derive from there the pattern of smoke spreading during the evacuation and its impact on evacuation and abandonment,
- the creation of the physical mechanisms to enable realistic and valid large-scale test facilities to simulate ship motions and smoke spreading in real-time, and to establish performance data for Life Saving Appliances,
- the development of AI-based software which - will convert the output of the simulation runs into a reduced set of human-intelligible figures of merit, and - will be able to trace back to its source any failure to achieve a sufficiently high assessment recommend improvements leading to a higher assessment
- the development of Concept Design software with: - an XML based interface to the simulation module, enabling conceptual designs to be tested at an early stage, and - a Safety Assessment module which will take the results of simulation runs, the assessment provided by the AI module and the Classification Society Fire Safety Rules and create in a principled way an evacuation-safe design.
To develop a rational and comprehensive approach to fire risk assessment which would form a basis for ulterior development of probabilistic design methods, consistent with the FSA approach and the new fire protection regulations in SOLAS. It aimed to develop an evacuation simulation system that could cope with realistic conditions during a fire-induced evacuation, including smoke and the effects of ship list and ship motions on evacuation and abandonment.
It aimed to test, refine and optimise the simulation through a series of tests in a large scale test facility endowed with the means to replicate ship motions and fire-induced smoke. Abandonment would be tested in a full-scale rig comprising a frame mounted over the sea and using real life-saving systems such as lifeboats, chutes, etc. The effect of sea state on the evacuation times and success rate would be examined through model tests of lifesaving devices. The simulation would be further refined and optimised in full-scale ship trials.
FIRE EXIT would develop an automatic AI-based simulation assessment and optimisation module which would be able to interpret the enormous amount of data coming out of simulation runs, reduce it to a meaningful assessment and suggest ways of improving it. FIRE EXIT would develop Concept Design modules that would take the assessment and convert it into an improved design, leading to a principled (non-rule based) approach to fire safety design. Evacuation simulation systems existed before FIRE EXIT. However, they did not cope with many of the aspects of a real-life evacuation situation (e.g. ship motions) and they are not seamlessly integrated into the design process, requiring data transfer and re-inputting at various stages.
We expected the FIRE EXIT project to reduce the time and cost of running one simulation scenario by 64% as follows: Typical time needed to complete task
- Inputting the ship geometry 5 man-days
- Creating a population distribution 0.5
- Creating the scenario itself 3
- Running cases 0.5
- Interpretation of results 2
Total work-content 11 man-days
Time to complete task with FIRE EXIT
- Inputting the ship geometry 1 man-day
- Creating a population distribution 0.5
- Creating the scenario itself 1
- Running cases 0.5
- Interpretation
Funding
Results
FIRE EXIT has developed a rational and comprehensive approach to fire risk assessment which forms a basis for ulterior development of probabilistic design methods, consistent with the FSA approach and the new fire protection regulations in SOLAS. FIRE EXIT has develop an evacuation simulation system that copes with realistic conditions during a fire-induced evacuation, including smoke and the effects of ship list and ship motions on evacuation and abandonment. The system has been tested, refine and optimised through a series of tests in a large scale test facility endowed with the means to replicate ship motions and fire-induced smoke. Abandonment has been tested in a full-scale rig comprising a frame mounted over the sea and using real life-saving systems such as lifeboats, chutes, etc. The effect of sea state on the evacuation times and success rate have been examined through model tests of lifesaving devices. The simulation has been further refined and optimised in full-scale ship trials.
FIRE EXIT has developed an automatic simulation assessment and optimisation module which is able to interpret the enormous amount of data coming out of simulation runs, reduce it to a meaningful assessment and suggest ways of improving it. FIRE EXIT has developed Concept Design modules that take the assessment and convert it into an improved design, leading to a principled (non-rule based) approach to fire safety design. Evacuation simulation systems existed before FIRE EXIT. However, they did not cope with many of the aspects of a real-life evacuation situation (e.g. ship motions) and they are not seamlessly integrated into the design process, requiring data transfer and re-inputting at various stages.
FIRE EXIT is able to reduced the time and cost of running one simulation scenario by 64% as follows: Typical time needed to complete task Inputting the ship geometry 5 man-days Creating a population distribution 0.5 Creating the scenario itself 3 Running cases 0.5 Interpretation of results 2 Total work-content 11 man-days Time to complete task with FIRE EXIT Inputting the ship geometry 1 man-day Creating a population distribution 0.5 Creating the scenario itself 1 Running cases 0.5 Interpretation of results 1 Total work-content 4 man-days
Policy implications
FIRE EXIT has developed advanced design methods which will lead to safer and more efficient ships, thus making a contribution towards European Union policies on maritime safety. It also provides tools which will enhance the capability, and hence the competitiveness, of the shipbuilding industry in the European Union, in line with EU industrial policies. This is also one of the objectives of the EU research and development policy, and of the review of R&D needs of the maritime industry as expressed in the European Maritime Industry R&D Master Plan, prepared by the R&D Co-ordination Group, established by the Maritime Industries Forum (MIF).
Maritime safety is one of the central concerns of the European Commission's transport policy. This notes the extent of losses at sea and the additional impact on marine pollution and its international dimension. Some of the more notable maritime disasters have been investigated on behalf of the Commission, in order to learn the lessons of such disasters with a view to incorporating this knowledge into new legislative measures to improve maritime safety.
The FIRE EXIT tools will have the ability to significantly improve maritime safety in two ways:
- Principled ship design which takes into account the needs for evacuation instead of relying blindly on design rules, will ensure that evacuation will, if required, take place under the optimum conditions;
- On-board training with real data will ensure that the crew are familiar with the proper procedures to implement in case of evacuation becoming necessary.
Council Resolution of 22 December 1994 on the safety of roll-on/roll-off passenger ferries (Official Journal C 379 , 31/12/1994 p. 0008 – 0009), notes a number of accidents involving passenger ferries in recent years, and makes various recommendations to improve safety of such craft. These include a review of the evacuation procedures applying to roll-on/roll-off passenger ferries including the procedures, equipment and crew training requirements for rapid evacuation, effective and understandable communication of safety information and for giving evacuation instructions to passengers on board.
More recently, Council Directive 98/18/EC of 17 March 1998 on safety rules and standards for passenger ships (Official Journal L 144 , 15/5/1998, pp.1-115) aimed to introduce a uniform level of safety of life and property on new and existing p