Norwegian company Autronica Fire and Security has delivered an extensive fire safety system to Royal Caribbean International''s forthcoming mega-cruise ship, ‘Allure of the Seas’.
The installation, which included the implementation of new ISEMS - Integrated Safety and Emergency Management System - functionality as part of the AutroMaster 5000 presentation system, is complete with final commissioning scheduled to take place in November 2010.
Autronica says that it was chosen to provide the systems for Allure of the Seas following the successful installation and subsequent smooth operation of the custom fire safety system aboard RCI's first mega-cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas.
"We have had excellent feedback from RCI about the Oasis of the Seas installation. They tell us that the system is easy to use and provides a great overview in an emergency operation as well as on a daily basis," said Jon-Arne Simonsen, Autronica's regional sales manager. "Allure of the Seas benefits from a similar custom system, that will provide crew and emergency staff with a complete, detailed overview of the entire vessel and safety systems, should there be a fire, or indeed any other kind of incident."
The sheer size of the Allure of the Seas means that the AutroMaster system has to handle and present a very large amount of data in an easy to view fashion. There are eight AutroMaster ISEMS terminals and several thousand points relaying data including: 37 fire alarm panels; 9500 smoke and heat detectors; 1030 fire doors; 300 sprinklers; 300 low location lights; 1350 controlled CCTV cameras; and 830 fire dampers
AutroMaster uses a graphical user interface to provide control and monitoring of every point and on all detection loops of the fire detection network onboard. The extra ISEMS functionality enables safety officers to have a more detailed view of what's happening onboard. These functions include:
- Decision support system - incident manager: Interactive incident management system.
- ISEMS plotting functionality: icon-based plotting system that allows operators to direct and keep track of emergency teams on the vessel's GA plan.
- Event replay: provides review of system events for training or investigation purposes.
- Training module: tool for interactive training and simulation of ISEMS operations.
- CCTV interface: automatic activation of the nearest camera to any detector/manual call point in alarm so that the situation may be viewed live.
- Advisory cards: text and pictures for various damage controls will be displayed either as a separate page or icons on the GA plan, providing information on how to act, for instance how to close a specific watertight door.
Also included are ISEMS modules for displaying status of watertight doors, showing primary and secondary escape routes as a layer on the GA plan and providing the open and closed status of shell doors.
Fourth generation
At the recent SMM exhibition, Autronica introduced the latest (fourth) generation of AutroSafe, its fire detection system for merchant, cruise and offshore vessels. The main difference from the previous versions is the introduction of AutroNet, an Ethernet-based panel network that connects individual panels through a dual-path, 100Mbps redundant system, which will safeguard communication between panels even if a line fault is present. Any alarms are transmitted safely to all panels because network traffic is duplicated along two independent network paths.
AutroNet expands the reach of the AutroSafe system so a single AutroSafe 4 network may include up to 64 fire alarm panels, involving, among other connections, 15,000 loop units connected to one system, six detector loops per panel, and a five- event log recording up to 10,000 events
New AutroKeeper relay units make redundant control of the loop possible, which, says Autronica, is important - should the primary loop controlling panel fail or misbehave, the secondary backup panel will take control of the loop.
Further upgrades provide simplified operation, installation and maintenance. The system is managed through a single point of operation for download of configuration data or program upgrades. This ensures faster and safer changes to the system program, via the panel network, AutroNet or a USB memory stick. AutroSafe 4 and AutroNet are certified according to European directives (CPD) requiring EN 54 compliance and have Factory Mutual (FM) approval according to NFPA 72.
