Underwriters Laboratories inks agreement with IIT Gandhinagar to develop Fire Safety measures

Oct. 6, 2009 - PRLog -- Ahmedabad: Underwriters Laboratories (UL), the world leader in product safety testing and certification is signing a collaboration agreement today with IIT-Gandhinagar to develop improved fire protection solution(s) to reduce hazards to firefighters and also to develop a national fire incident database.  As the global leader in Safety Standards UL believes it is natural for it to work on such collaborative projects and would fund the projects. To flag off the projects, Dr. Pravinray.D.Gandhi, Director, Global Corporate Research, UL visited India to present a lecture to the IIT-G students on "Fire Protection Engineering”. The collaboration will be between UL University and IIT Gandhinagar.

Commenting on UL’s association with IIT-G, Mr. R.A Venkitachalam, Vice President & Managing Director, UL Emerging Markets said, “At UL, we always strive to promote and propagate safety-related messages and projects. The association between UL and the premium institutes in India, like IIT – G, will ensure healthy academic interaction between renowned and industry-experienced personnel and students leading to innovative solutions in a multidisciplinary engineering area like Fire Safety Engineering”.

UL, through its Public Safety Office, Corporate Research, and BMS and LSS commercial groups, has decided to support two projects at IIT Gandhinagar. UL will fund two projects to develop fire protection solution(s) to enhance strategic and tactical plans in India so as to reduce hazards to firefighters and also to assemble a national fire incident database for documenting the fire events in India. Such a data base will help develop the right engineering practices for fire prevention / detection / suppression and also be of great use to the insurance industry

As part of this program the student team will be invited to visit Underwriters Laboratories facilities in Northbrook IL. As a deliverable, the team will also get to work with Delhi Fire Department to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system. In the second project to develop the national fire incident database for documenting the fire events in India, students will focus on designing and implementing a web-based database to document fire incidents throughout India. The team will meet with staff of US Fire Administration managing the US National Fire Incident Database System (NFIRS). As a deliverable, the team will implement the web-based database system and enable connectivity for fire departments throughout India.

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Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is an independent product safety certification organization that has been testing products and writing Standards for Safety for over a century. UL evaluates more than 19,000 types of products, components, materials and systems annually with 20 billion UL Marks appearing on 72,000 manufacturers’ products each year. UL’s worldwide family of companies and network of service providers includes 64 laboratory, testing and certification facilities serving customers in 99 countries