Collaborative Hazard Control: Designing a Digital Fire Control Center for Enhanced Safety on Ships

Abstract

Collaborative Hazard Control: Designing a Digital Fire Control Center for Enhanced Safety on Ships

Every day, thousands of vessels of varying sizes traverse the world’s seas, posing significant risks of ship loss, cargo damage, and loss of crew lives due to onboard fires, which can rapidly escalate beyond control. With the ongoing advancement towards highly automated or autonomous ships, the challenge of ensuring an adequate number of experienced firefighters onboard will diminish. Consequently, enabling external firefighting personnel or operators stationed in control rooms to oversee the overall situation becomes crucial in guiding less-experienced crew members in fire containment and prevention efforts. This necessity for future autonomous vessels and current manned ones underscores the importance of enhancing shared situational awareness and establishing platforms for informed decision-making and communication. Ships comprise multiple decks housing various sensors, firefighting equipment, and cargo with different risk classifications. For fire chiefs and control room operators stationed on the ship bridge or on land, early detection of fires and the implementation of appropriate measures to mitigate risks are essential. This paper presents the design of a digital fire central (DFC), developed through a human-centred design process and evaluated by three fire chiefs aboard Roll-on-Roll-Off (Ro-Ro) ships. The primary focus lies in detailing the design process and presenting initial insights from user evaluations.