Computer Vision Application for Early Stage Smoke Detection on Ships

Abstract

Nowadays, ship’s engine room is fire protected by automatic fire fighting systems, usually controlled from a place located outside the engine room. In order to activate the water mist extinguishing system automatically, at least two different fire detectors have to be activated. One of these detectors is a flame detector that is not hampered by various air flows caused by ventilation or draft and is rapidly activated and the other is smoke detector which is hampered by these flows causing its activation to be delayed. As a consequence, the automatic water mist extinguishing system is also delayed, allowing for fire expansion and its transfer to surrounding rooms. In addition to reliability of the ship’s fire detection system as one of the crucial safety features for the ship, cargo, crew and passengers, using a systematic approach in this research the emphasis is placed on the application of new methods in smoke detection such as the computer image processing and analysis, in order to achieve this goal. This paper describes the research carried out on board ship using the existing marine CCTV systems in early stages of smoke detection inside ship’s engine room, which could be seen as a significant contribution to accelerated suppression of unwanted consequences.