The European Atlantic coast is one of the busiest seaways along which harbours accommodate every kind of ship for trading, or are intended for ship maintenance and for ship building.
One of the more dangerous risks a ship is a fire. And one of the main problems when a fire starts is the smoke and its propagation everywhere through any kind of ducts (gangways, staircases, technical ducts, etc.).
This leads to two difficulties: 1) how to know about the fire evolution, the smoke movements, and above all what are the dangers; 2) how the staff can react to these problems especially when the ship is far away from any harbour. To get a better efficiency of the crews, these two difficulties must be studied together.
So the staff training against fire must focus on means of extinction, but also on psychological capacities to face to these situations using all means available on board.
The most critical situations occur when there are many passengers on board and when the ship is far away from any harbour. In that case, the staff must be able to act on its own means, which is really difficult because of the panic risk of passengers and because of the stress of the crew.
This is why we propose to study together, the new technologies to know about ship fires and how to better face to them, but also the psychological capacities of a crew to treat a fire.