The Challenge
Fire remains one of the biggest risks to safety and assets on board a cargo ship. Despite fire safety and detection best practice on board, increases in thermal levels of cargo vehicles remains a challenge to detect. Wallenius Wilhelmsen (WW) are one of the world’s largest global vehicle carrier operators. They sought innovative solutions which could deliver real-time, early detection of such thermal level increases of transported vehicles. These temperature increases can potentially result in a fire, so early detection can be key to saving lives. WW looked for sensor-led solutions to detect these small increases in thermal levels in very large and specific locations onboard, in real-time.
Applicants should haveconsider how their proposed solution would be able to detect the abnormal thermal increase across a whole ship and locate its source on a deck, across multiple specific locations. Communication of the results to a warning panel, ideally through real-time monitoring, was also a preferred specification. The solution should have also produced little or no false positives, should have been cost-efficient and user friendly.