Fire safety of battery powered autonomous ferry: a case study of Sundbåten using System-Theoretic Process Analysis
Abstract
Battery solutions onboard ships is rising in popularity as implementation of green technologies is becoming increasingly important to satisfy environmental aspects and the risk has to be critically assessed. Trial and error is a crucial element in developing technical solutions, but a lack of knowledge and experience can greatly increase the potential for unexpected causal scenarios leading to unacceptable losses. To identify causal factors for complex systems taking various elements into consideration there is a relatively new risk analysis method called System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA) designed for modern socio-technical systems. Due to the flexibility of the method, it is capable of analyzing causal factors and the interactivity between the different elements such as software, human elements, physical components and so on. However, there is relatively few studies applying STPA on autonomous ships with battery solutions.
The objective of this thesis is to investigate and add research towards battery fire safety onboard ships. For this purpose, the thesis includes a qualitative analysis of existing research on the topic, investigation of battery fire accidents, and a preliminary risk analysis of the new electric passenger ferry with autonomous capabilities called “Sundbåten” using STPA.