Fire Hazard Inspection

Challenge

Current procedures for preventing ship fires include extinguishers, rules forbidding smoking on board, and visual inspection. Crews need to patrol and check for smoke every 30 minutes in all ship areas.

However, this method is not accurate at detecting container fires, and even when detected, valuable time is spent finding the origin of the fire. Statistics show a fire occurs on a ship every 60 days, and this has increased to every 30 days this year. Notable recent fires include Grande America, Yantian Express, APL Vancouver, ER Kobe, and KMTC Hong Kong, all in 2019.

A ship fire results in a significant repair bill and ship downtime, with an average loss of €20 million or €120 million/year to the shipping industry. Fire incidents account for 13% of shipping losses, the second biggest cause after machine breakdown. Additionally, insurance costs contribute to a total of €450 million/yr, resulting in a €570 million/year problem.

Solution

Upteko has created beacons for the drone to position itself over the ship during situational awareness and docking. By placing more beacons for larger ships and one beacon for smaller ships, the drone will position itself over the designated beacon and use the thermal sensor to create a heat map of the ship.

If any abnormal heat signatures are present, the system will trigger an alarm to the bridge, indicating that an area is hotter than usual. This allows real-time visualization on the live heatmap, pinpointing the location of the heat anomaly, enabling targeted inspections in the correct area.