Britisher wins annual COMPIT award for paper 'Risk-based Approach to Fire Safety in Ship Design'
Richard Pawling has been announced winner of the GL COMPIT Award 2012. The British computer aided design expert’s paper “The Development of Modelling Methods and Interface Tools Supporting a Risk Based Approach to Fire Safety in Ship Design”, was honoured for its contribution to the promotion of innovative approaches in conceptual ship design, at the COMPIT Conference which took place from 16 to 18 April 2012 in Liege, Belgium.
COMPIT is the acronym of "Computer Applications and Information Technology in the Maritime Industries“. The conference, which took place for the eleventh time, offered information on advanced IT applications for the ship life cycle. Topics such as “Virtual Reality,” “Marine Robotics”, and “IT Tools for Fuel Efficiency”, amongst others, were discussed by the participants. As in previous years, Germanischer Lloyd was a main sponsor of this event.
The jury singled out Mr Pawling, from a short list of several highly qualified candidates, because his paper combined advanced engineering simulations (fire simulations and evacuation simulations) with risk-based design approaches. Risk based design approaches, which are widely advocated by IMO and classification societies alike, offer the ship designer complete design freedom, as long as a certain safety level is achieved. The jury noted that Mr Pawling’s contribution reflects a general trend in the ship design community and commended the paper for its direct relevance to practical applications and its clarity and precision of expression.