New Delhi, (IANS) The one-year-old Indian Institute of Technology-Gandhinagar (IIT-G) will develop a national fire accident registry to provide better data and develop protection solutions for firefighters across the country, it was announced here Tuesday.

Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a leading US firm on product safety testing and certification, has agreed to a tie-up with the new IIT for this work. “Yes, it was mooted during a lecture by a top UL official,” Maj.Gen. (retd.) Vijay Aga, the officer on special duty at IIT-G, told IANS.

The agreement is about two projects that are interrelated - a national fire registry and solutions to reduce hazards for firefighters. Both the projects will be funded by UL.

The national fire incident database will document fire events in India. Such a data base will help develop the right engineering practices for fire prevention, detection, and suppression.

As part of this programme, a student team of IIT-G will visit UL facilities in the US. The team will also get to work with the Delhi Fire Service to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system.

For the national registry, the IIT students team will meet with staff of US Fire Administration managing the US National Fire Incident Database System (NFIRS). The team will implement the web-based database system and enable connectivity for fire departments throughout India.

Reacting to the association with IIT-G, UL vice president R.A Venkitachalam said: “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.”

-- IANS