Explore Phase

Together with Allianz, our research department has conducted an exploration phase on fire awareness, prevention and protection in SME’s of the textile manufacturing industry in Europe. After several interviews with SME owners from Turkey and France, we have been able to gather relevant insights on their view on fire protection and prevention. You can find all of our results from this explore phase in the Detailed Information section.

Some countries, such as France, Spain, and Germany, require SMEs to be insured against fire hazards. Other countries, such as Turkey, do not require this insurance. However, despite this difference in legislation, the risks of fire hazards and most importantly the damages caused when a fire occurs, is in most cases highly severe. The current measures involved to bring the company back to an operative status are very costly and time-consuming. Businesses lose clients because of delayed delivery times, have to lay-off employees due to the lack of income, and sometimes have to shut down if they were not insured.

Your Mission

Allianz would like to propose a fire protection device to SMEs in the textile industry, which would be efficient enough to significantly reduce the damages caused by fire hazards, but also be cheap enough to be an option for small businesses with or without insurance. It is also important that the solution can easily be implementable in existing textile manufacturing infrastructures.

Your challenge is to conceptualize such a device. You can find in the Detailed Information section, a comprehensive list of existing devices that fit the categories of fire prevention (stopping a fire from starting, before any flames), fire detection (identifying fire and notifying relevant people) and fire protection (fighting against the fire itself). Feel free to use these devices as inspiration.

This challenge focuses on fire protection devices. However, a protection device that is not linked to any detection methods has little to no use. For example, a very effective water sprinkler starts automatically when the temperature rises and a thin glass breaks, triggering the sprinklers. So make sure you include how your device will be activated as well.

Your submission should include:

A catchy title

A teaser description (max 130 characters) for a quick overview

A detailed description of the device and it's funtionalities/properties.

A sketch / design / modeling (rudimentary is sufficient at this stage)

References of existing components that your device would utilize (if relevant)

Evaluation Criteria

Your submissions will be evaluated by experts from Allianz, as well as many HYVE Crowd community members, according to the following criteria:

Protection Effectiveness (how effectively does the device fight against fire)

Fast Response (detection & reaction)

Cost Efficiency

Installation Effort (retrofitting on existing infrastructures)

Maintenance Effort

Scalability (bigger companies & other industries)

Timeline

Start: May 25th 2018
End: July 8th 2018
Jury Meeting: September 2018
Winner Announcement: September 2018