The colossal container ships that make international enterprise attainable have grow to be a harmful hearth threat. After years of lobbying, the Hamburg headquartered Worldwide Union of Marine Insurance coverage (IUMI) and its supporters have managed to get this fireplace security difficulty onto the agenda of the Worldwide Maritime Organisation (IMO).

“The precise work will begin subsequent yr in March,” stated Hendrike Kühl (pictured above), coverage director of the IUMI, an organisation that represents marine property insurers with greater than 40 nationwide insurance coverage associations worldwide as members.

Kühl stated marine hearth dangers are a “big difficulty” and “on all people’s thoughts.”

Container ship fires: “a typical prevalence”

Kühl stated this difficulty has been round for a few years.

An IUMI report submitted to the IMO in 2020 discovered that cargo fires on container ships “have grow to be a typical prevalence” inflicting “quite a few casualties” and “extreme injury.”

The report discovered that between 2000 and 2015, greater than 50 of those fires brought about simply over US$1 billion in damages (excluding hull damages).

“The values which can be being transported on board these extremely massive container vessels, however even on smaller container vessels, are big values,” stated Kühl. “So in the event that they burn that may be a drawback for property insurers and clearly the hull insurers as properly.”

Container ships have doubled in measurement

In keeping with international insurer Allianz, container ships at present are carrying an unimaginable 1500% extra containers than they had been within the late Sixties. In simply the final decade, the most important vessels have nearly doubled in measurement to 400 metres lengthy (see image instantly under courtesy Allianz World Company & Specialty, Security & Delivery Assessment).

This up-sizing is driving up the fireplace threat.

“Clearly, the danger does improve with the variety of packing containers that you have on board as a result of one of many root causes is usually misdeclaration or non-declaration of harmful items,” stated Kühl. “That may be a actual drawback.”

She stated that is the place the IUMI has to “parallel observe” to cope with two associated points.

“We do want to deal with the issue of misdeclaration and non-declaration of harmful items as a result of it’s troublesome if you do not know what’s contained in the packing containers, in addition they could be saved somewhere else on board,” stated Kühl. “On the similar time, the firefighting methods on board these vessels have not actually grown with the dimensions of the vessels.”

She stated other than the introduction of water displays and water mist lances (so crew can penetrate a container if it catches hearth) in 2016, there have been no important upgrades to fireplace security guidelines on container ships for the reason that Sixties.

“That’s clearly not sufficient once you have a look at the dimensions of the vessels lately,” stated Kühl. “From our viewpoint it must be automated.”

Ship crew should not firefighters

She stated, ideally, the ship’s crew ought to be faraway from the firefighting.

“Typically the fires occur when they’re at sea distant so there isn’t any help and there are not any tugboats,” stated Kühl. “So that they should cope with it however ideally, they might be eliminated and it could be automated and there could be water curtains and extra automated methods together with bigger scale, fastened water displays.”

Different options embrace higher detection methods.

“The detection methods should be improved considerably,” she stated. “In the intervening time, it is simply not ok, it takes too lengthy for fires to be detected.”

Kühl stated thermal imaging cameras or fuel detection mechanisms are two attainable methods to go about this.

“The sooner you detect a hearth, the upper the chance is that you’ll extinguish it,” she stated.

Marine insurance coverage wants extra digital options

Regardless of the world’s a lot publicised progress in digital know-how and synthetic intelligence, Kühl steered that not a lot of that has reached container ship threat administration processes.

“It is nonetheless not really easy to truly work out what’s inside all these packing containers and what the buildup threat is for particular person insurers,” she stated. “That is really one other necessary facet that our members have been specializing in lately, to deliver extra digitalized options into the marine insurance coverage world as properly.”

Now that the container ship hearth security difficulty is on the IMO’s agenda, the Ship Methods and Tools Subcommittee (SSE10), can begin taking a look at options.

“I really suppose it is in all probability the one platform [the IMO] the place you possibly can obtain change however as a result of there are such a lot of stakeholders and so many actors [175 member states] concerned it’s a lengthy course of,” stated Kühl.

Nevertheless, she doesn’t anticipate all of the IUMI security suggestions to be accepted.

“What we hope is to maneuver the needle in the direction of extra security, in the direction of extra severe enhancements than what we have seen in 2016 with these water mist lances,” she stated.

Kühl expects the primary hearth security enhancements to be applied in 2028.

Are you a marine insurance coverage stakeholder concerned with container ships? How do you see the fireplace dangers? Please inform us under