The traditional fire safety regulations that apply to ship design have been described as inadequate in two ways: (i) they can impose constraints on novel designs, and (ii) novel designs can have features that do not satisfy the premise of existing rules, thus making approval more difficult and potentially leading to unsafe ships. In order to remedy this problem FIREPROOF will develop a universally applicable regulatory framework for maritime fire safety based on probabilistic analysis and numerical models of ignition, growth and impact of fires. In principle, the framework will be similar to the well established probabilistic damage stability regulation (SOLAS Ch. II-1). The project will address fire risk of passenger ships only.

The methodology of the proposed fire safety regulation will consist of (i) a mathematical model for the generation of fire scenarios (with the appropriate probability distribution function for each involved parameter), and (ii) numerical models for the consequence assessment of the generated scenarios. For any given passenger ship (existing or new) a large number of scenarios will be generated and their consequences will be assessed. The results will be aggregated to suitable fire risk metrics, constraints on which will serve as statutory regulations. In this way, design creativity and innovation will coexist with higher level of safety.