Consortium to Assess Containership Fire Safety for EMSA

A consortium led by the Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology (DBI) will deliver a Formal Safety Assessment study on containership fires to the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). The project aims to identify cost-effective risk control options for cargo fires on board container vessels.

Considering the constant increase in containership sizes and the frequency of fire originating in containers, the study will quantitatively assess the fire risks on board containerships and evaluate new fire safety measures by comparing the risk reductions and the associated costs.

The project has been awarded to a consortium led by the Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology (DBI) supported by Research Institutes of Sweden AB (RISE), the University of Southern Denmark (SUD), the Odense Maritime Technology A/S (OMT) and the classification society Bureau Veritas.  

An online kick-off meeting was held in January and work is already progressing at full steam, with a series of four online Hazard Identification workshops led by DBI and covering all possible fire safety areas (prevention, detection and alarm, containment, firefighting). The HAZID workshops gathered experts from major container ships companies, Flag State administrations, equipment suppliers and members of the consortium.

The study is expected to be finalized in February 2023 and the results are to be presented to the International Maritime Organization.