A hazardous condition can be many things. It can be a fire or a gas concentration that is slowly rising, unusual heat in a cargo space – or a person who has not moved in a couple of minutes. In all cases early detection is crucial.
What is a hazardous condition? Conventional alarm systems are designed to respond to established events – a fire that has started, a threshold that has been crossed. LifeFinder is designed to detect the conditions that precede those events, and to flag them before they escalate.
A hazardous condition can be environmental: heat building in an enclosed space, gas accumulating in an engine room, water ingress. It can also be human: a crew member who has stopped moving in an isolated area, who has not returned from a confined space entry within the expected time, or who is in difficulty and presses the panic button.
Stationary sensors deployed throughout a vessel or a facility monitor for changes in conditions. When readings deviate from normal, an alert is generated with the location of the anomaly – giving operators time to act.
• Temperature increase and heat build-up
• Smoke detection
• Gas concentrations – including gases from EV battery venting
• Oil mist
• Water ingress
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When every crew member carries a LifeFinder sensor, the platform can be configured to handle different situations.
If something happens and the person can still act, a single press on the device sends an immediate alert with their exact position.
Can be configured for many different situations. Apart from the usual check-in feature it can be configured to register the time between check.in and check-out to enable alerts if the timeframe is exceeded. It also speeds up mustering.
LifeFinder is running a pilot with a company in industrial waste management, where personnel work alone in individual containers across a large sit, handling hazardous materials. Man-down detection, automatic alerts, and precise positioning mean that if something happens to a person in an isolated area, the response team knows immediately – and knows exactly where to go.
The same logic applies on any vessel. A crew member carrying out a night inspection on the car deck. An engineer working alone in the engine room. The risks differ, but the need is the same.
privacy by design
The platform does not log or store crew positions during normal operations. Location data is only recorded and made available when an alert condition is active – triggered automatically by the system, or by the crew member.
fire incidents were reported across the global fleet in 2024 – the highest figure in a decade, with around 30% occurring on container, cargo, and ro-ro vessels.
Fire safety at sea is not a new problem. But the tools available to crews today are fundamentally different from what existed a decade ago.