The September, 2013 edition of Fire Safety Science News, the official newsletter of the IAFSS is now available online. The latest issue includes a special Issue on Education in Fire Safety Engineering.
The 2011 Global Technical Leadership Seminar in Fire Safety Engineering at Edinburgh, UK International Association for Fire Safety Science A charity registered in England and Wales no 800306 Fire Safety Science News http://www.iafss.org Sept 2013, Issue No. 35 Editor‐in‐Chief: Guillermo Rein Special Issue on Education in Fire Safety Engineering IAFSS was founded in 1988 with the primary objective of encouraging research into the science of preventing and mitigating the adverse effects of fires and of providing a forum for presenting the results of such research Secretariat Office: c/o Interscience Communications , West Yard House ,Guildford Grove, London SE10 8JT, UK Tel: + 44 (0) 208 692 5050 Fax: + 44 (0) 208 692 5155 Email: [email protected]
A charity registered in England and Wales no 800306
Fire Safety Science News http://www.iafss.org
Sept2013,IssueNo.35Editor‐in‐Chief:GuillermoRein
SpecialIssueonEducationinFireSafetyEngineering
IAFSS was founded in 1988 with the primary objective of encouraging research into the science of preventing and mitigating the adverse effects of fires and of providing a forum for presenting the results of such research
Secretariat Office: c/o Interscience Communications , West Yard House ,Guildford Grove, London SE10 8JT, UK
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 2
The views, findings and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Editorial Board, IAFSS, or any other affiliated. All text in this newsletter is licensed under a
Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. If you use part of this content anywhere, please cite the article properly, link back to our website and include the license.
Our Aims Fire Safety Science News aims to be a platform for spreading the work of IAFSS members, and to be the place where fire safety scientists can read what is not readily found elsewhere, thus favoring news, trending research, opinions, and controversial topics in the field. A digital archive of previous issues can be found online.
EDITORIAL The cover of this issue is illustrated with a photo of the participants at the 2011 seminar organized by the University of Edinburgh on Leadership in Fire Safety Engineering. According to the recent article/white-paper published by the organizers in Fire Safety Journal (58, 2013, 180–194), the seminar was motivated by "the need to have a new generation of leaders in FSE that can drive the field through the ongoing and necessary transition to performance-based design that it is currently experiencing". Since them, two more seminars have been organized which outcomes are expected in the form of white papers.
For this issue, we invited a series of Featured Articles on the topic of education in Fire Safety Engineering (FSE). We are publishing 15 submissions covering a wide geographical portion of the world (Asia, Europe, and North America). It show the significantly different objectives, programmes and challenges at each institution. This international compilation of articles offers a rather unique composite view of the state of the art of FSE education. One hopes that it would lead to the promotion and exchange of new ideas across institutions and perhaps set up other international collaborations in education.
There is only one Featured Article in this issue on technical matters. We asked INERIS experts to report on some of their recent work on battery fires. After the recent fire events with faulty batteries aboard the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplanes – these events were extensively covered by international media for months and lead to a quick redesign of the system- we thought the topic deserves to be at the forefront of fire safety research as well.
The deadline for the submission of material for the next issue (No.36) is January 10, 2014. If you are interested in contributing, please contact the Editor in Chief. Letters to the Editor are most welcome in response to articles or on any other topic related to the IAFSS.
Signed: Guillermo Rein, Editor-in-Chief, Imperial College London. [email protected]
EDITORIAL BOARD
Editor-in-Chief: Guillermo Rein (UK) Associate Editors: Patrick van Hees (Sweden), Michael Gollner (USA), Naian Liu (China), Ai Sekizawa (Japan), Michael Spearpoint (New Zealand), Jack Watts (USA). Contributing Editors: Marcos Chaos (USA), Wan-ki Chow (Hong Kong), Rita Fahy (USA), Nils Johansson (Sweden), Peter Johnson (Australia), Grunde Jomaas (Denmark), Anthony Hamins (USA), Anja Hofmann Böllinghaus (Germany), David Lange (Sweden), Mariano Lazaro (Spain), Samuel Manzello (USA), Guy Marlair (France), Bart Merci (Belgium), Ali Rangwala (USA), Albert Simeoni (USA), Anna Stec (UK), Peter Sunderland (USA), Russ Thomas (Canada) and Stephen Welch (UK).
TABLE OF CONTENTS Page 2 Editorial 3 Letter from the Chairman 4 News from IAFSS 6 News from members 14 Special on Education of Fire Engineering
Prof Rasbash; Edinburgh; Canterbury; UST China; DTU; France; Germany; Hong Kong Polytechnic; IMFSE; Kentucky; Lund; Maryland; SFPE; Spain.
43 Featured Article: Battery safety challenges 45 Conference Reports 47 Call for Papers 49 Upcoming Events 50 Jobs Offers 53 Obituary
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LETTER FROM THE CHAIR
The next IAFSS Symposium is just around the corner. The paper review process has been proceeding smoothly, with many of you being recently advised of the outcome of your paper submission – congratulations and commiserations! Perhaps, the IAFSS Symposia represent the most competitive venue for publication of recent investigations into fire safety science and engineering, truly at the cutting edge of international research. I would like to thank the reviewers and the Program Committee, whose work sustains the pursuit for research excellence that, for more than two decades, has been associated with the IAFSS Symposia. From over 200 papers, roughly half have been accepted or authors invited to made corrections as suggested by the reviewers. The final list of accepted papers should be known in October.
Likewise, the Arrangements Committee has been making good progress with the local preparations. The Symposium banquet will be held in the Cardboard
Cathedral, a transitional building standing for the cathedral destroyed in the earthquake. Christchurch operates as gateway to Antarctic, and the optional program of the Symposia will include a visit to the International Antarctic Centre.
Please don’t forget about the remaining deadlines for submission of poster abstracts (15 Oct 2013) and fire images (20 Jan 2014). Both poster presentation and exhibition of fire images proved successful at previous Symposia. IAFSS Symposium Workshops will be organised on the Sunday immediately before the Symposium itself (9 Feb 2014). This time, the workshops will include (I) Wildfires and climate change; (ii) Multi-objective fire safety system designs – economy, sustainability and aesthetics; (iii) Education; (iv) Benchmarking and data sharing; and (v) New approaches for evacuation modelling: return to the origins and walk to the future. It might be worthwhile to consider arriving one day ahead the Symposium opening to attend the workshops.
The IAFSS Committee, at its last meeting held at Interflam, was in three minds about the mode of publishing the proceedings of the 2014 Symposium. Strong views were expressed for E-book only, print on demand or for maintaining the present model, but with no consensus. For this reason, the Committee would like to ask you for advice via a survey, on how best to proceed with publishing of the proceedings. Please reply to a forthcoming invitation to participate in the survey, once you receive it.
Signed: Bogdan Dlugogorski, Chair IAFSS, University of Newcastle, Australia
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NEWS FROM IAFSS
New IAFSS Website Highlights The new website of the IAFSS at http://www.iafss.org has recently been released. Please email [email protected] if you have comments on the website or are interested in contributing. The following highlights some of its services.
11IAFSS: Visit the site and explore up-to-date information on the upcoming 2014 IAFSS Symposium. Information on paper, image and poster submissions, venue, registration and more will be updated here as it becomes available.
NEWS: Do you have interesting news about fire science that you would like to share with the community? A large award won, review of a conference or significant research advancement? The web team is always looking for suggestions of new content to share with the community. Please send any suggestions to us. Please note, all submissions will be subject to review.
PUBLICATIONS: The digital archive of open access documents includes the IAFSS Symposium Proceedings, AOSFST Proceedings and Fire Research Notes. Complementary access to Fire Technology is also provided through a link for IAFSS members only.
EVENTS: Looking for upcoming conferences, symposia and events? The Upcoming Events list on the new IAFSS website is an up-to-date resource of events related to the fire sciences around the world. That information is compiled several times a year into Fire Safety Science News, but it is also updated daily on the IAFSS website. If you are looking for the right venue to present your work, we encourage you to visit the website. If you are hosting a conference or would like to add any fire-related event to the list, please email us to add them.
JOBS: We are currently accepting announcements for open positions in the fire sciences. Specifically, we are posting upcoming academic and research related positions on the site. If you are interested in posting an announcement, please email us.
TEAM: The New Technologies Committee is also looking for interested IAFSS members to join the website team. We could use additional help, especially in the area of content editing and generation. Please email [email protected] if are interested in contributing. Students and postdocs are especially encouraged to join the team!
IAFSS STATISTICS by M Gollner Breakdown of members by type of membership
As of June, 2013 there were 690 registered members of the IAFSS
Members registered to the IAFSS Linked-In Group
As of August, 2013 there were 668 members of the IAFSS Linked In Group
2012 IAFSS Website Views
Between Jan 1, 2012 and Jan 1, 2013 the new IAFSS website was viewed 69,503 times
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NEWS FROM MEMBERS
News from Arup AFFORDABLE HOUSING: Arup in Australia has been part of a successful winning bid to undertake some fundamental research in affordable housing. The research will be led by the School of Architecture and Prof Jose Torero from the Civil Engineering School of the University of Queensland in partnership with Hutchinson Builders, Marquette Properties and Arup. The title of the Australian Government funded research is “The design and construction of quality, sustainable and affordable pre-made housing in Australia - optimisation and integration”. The background to the project is that historically, industrialised construction has resulted in an industrialisation of the parts, rather than an industrialisation of the ensemble. In contrast, this project will integrate architecture and engineering, as well as construction and development to optimise the ensemble, and deliver architectural quality in industrially produced affordable housing. A key element of this project will be to look at performance of materials and all aspects of fire safety, including fire protection measures.
TIMBER FOR TALL BUILDINGS: With the development of new engineered timber products, and the growing awareness of the efficiencies provided by prefabricated timber composite systems, the construction industry has come to recognize that timber also offers an economically favourable construction method. However, present day timber construction is challenged in most countries by artificial height and area limits of prescriptive fire safety codes. To investigate these artificial limits, it is important to fully understand the risks and consequences associated with tall timber construction, especially with regard to fire safety. This involves a multi-disciplinary approach in understanding the fire threat, material response and structural response. Recognizing the importance of sustainable construction methods, the National Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF) is funding a grant to evaluate current knowledge and identify the risks of tall timber construction. Arup has been awarded this grant, as we are recognized as one of the leaders in the field, and Arup will match the FPRP contribution from the firm’s Design and Technical research fund.
This research is designed to evaluate the potential and the true limitations that structural timber construction offers for tall (high rise) buildings by coordinating the global knowledge, experience, and recent technological advances in analysis, testing, and construction methods. This aim corresponds to three areas of Arup’s 2013 Research Roadmap: Understanding Future Infrastructure Requirements for Cities, Emerging Technologies and Society and Behaviour. A final report will be prepared summarizing the findings of the analysis and making recommendations for gaps in knowledge, experimental testing and providing a framework for approaching the future based on using structural timber in high rise construction.
Signed: Peter Johnson, Arup
News from the University of Cantabria FULL-SCALE TESTS: At the end of July, the University of Cantabria, through GIDAI Group, participated in the development of a series of full-scale fire tests and evacuation experiments in a transportation station in Madrid (Spain). The tests are included in the Research and Development Project ‘SEGTRANS’ led by KV Consultores and which also Sacyr Concesiones, Euroestudios, Tapusa and the Polytechnic University of Madrid. This project has the objective to investigate, develop and validate various innovative technologies related to safety against deliberate actions (deliberate explosions, intentional attacks, fire, etc.) that may affect transport terminals.
LOAD FACTORS: Last June, GIDAI Group finalized the research project “Evaluating occupant load factors for business use areas” in collaboration with the Fire Protection Research Foundation (NFPA). The occupant load factor has been widely employed by engineers and architects to determine the means of egress requirements (number of routes, dimensions, etc). The NFPA Standards (NFPA 101, Life Safety Code and NFPA 5000 Building Construction and Safety Code) specifies an occupant load factor of 100 square feet/person of floor area for all business occupancies. This value is based on the traditional office layouts in the 1930´s. However the new business uses and the use of these spaces have considerably changed. Call centres or high productivity technology based business can result in higher density levels. Therefore, there is a need for real data in order to evaluate whether the occupant load factor established by NFPA standards can be applied to all business use areas. The goal of the project was to collect and process data regarding the actual occupant loads, specifically in office environments. For that purpose, site surveys were conducted in different types of office buildings (public administration and private sector companies) in the cities of Santander, Madrid and Bilbao (Spain). 39 office floors from 20 companies were analyzed from on-site surveys (more than 65,000 m2). Data regarding the real number of people and gross floor area were collected. This work provides data to the Technical Committee on Mercantile and Business Occupancies to either support the current occupant load factor or to justify the need for multiple occupant lad factors for business use areas that would accommodate both the concentrated and less concentrated use.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 7
Signed: Mariano Lázaro, Universidad de Cantabria
News from University of Edinburgh We are pleased to announce that Prof. Albert Simeoni, recently Associate Professor at WPI, will be joining us in July 2013 as the BRE Chair of Fire Safety Engineering and Director of the BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering. Albert is no stranger to Edinburgh having worked here as a research fellow a few years ago. Also joining the academic staff team at Edinburgh are Dr Ricky Carvel, who took up his post as Lecturer in Combustion and Fire Dynamics in April, and Dr Rory Hadden, who started in July as the Rushbrook Lecturer in Fire Investigation.
As I am writing this, the summer graduations are fast approaching. This year we have nine undergraduate students graduating with MEng degrees in Structural and Fire Safety Engineering (two of them with 1st class honours) and Dr Mariyana Aida Ab-Kadir, Dr Panagiotis Kotsovinos, Dr Ahmad Al-Remal and Dr Yaqiang Jiang are all due to graduate with PhDs. Most of the IMFSE students who are graduating in Ghent in June have studied in Edinburgh for part of their degrees.
We are pleased to announce that the large-scale fire tests we mentioned in the last newsletter, part of the “Real Fires for the Safe Design of Tall Buildings” project, have been successfully carried out in the BRE burn hall this term. You can see video blogs of the construction of the test compartment on our YouTube channel. However, as the fire tests are part of a ‘blind’ fire modelling exercise, we can’t show any photos, video, or test data just yet. All will be revealed in the fullness of time.
You can follow us on our Blog, Twitter, Facebook page and YouTube channel. See http://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/fire for details.
Signed: Ricky Carvel, University of Edinburgh
News from Ghent University PHD DEFENSE: On 4 June 2013 Zhi Tang defended his PhD 'Investigation of Downward Displacement of Fire Smoke under the Effect of a Spray of Water Droplets Discharged from a Nozzle'. It is a joint PhD of Ghent University, Belgium (Prof. Bart Merci), and Wuhan University, China (Prof. Zheng Fang). The classical Bullen theory has been revisited and an analytical model, suited for two-zone model calculations, has been developed. Experiments have been performed at Wuhan University. CFD calculations have been supervised at Ghent University, with as final application a longitudinally ventilated tunnel with sprinklers. The first publications from this PhD thesis have already been published in Fire Safety Journal this year. In the photo below, Zhi Tang is standing on the right. The supervisors (Prof. Merci, Ghent University, and Prof. Fang, Wuhan University) are on the left.
RABOT2012: As announce in the previous issue of Fire Safety News (#34), Ghent University has conducted 4 large-scale multi-compartment fire tests in an apartment in one of the 'Rabot' towers in the city of Ghent (Belgium). At the recently launched RABOT2012 website, it is possible to study the sensor set-up and to test/evaluate the sensor data. Furthermore, this website hosts the publicly available video dataset of the fire tests and all related documents.
Signed: Bart Merci, Ghent University
News from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University Professor W.K. Chow was elected as a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences (HKAES) in December 2012, and the conferment ceremony was held on 26 March 2013. The Academy was founded by eight
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visionary academics including Nobel Laureate Professor Sir Charles Kao and Sir S.Y. Chung, a leading engineering scholar of Hong Kong. HKAES aims at promoting excellence in the field of engineering and bringing Hong Kong’s most eminent and distinguished engineers of all disciplines together. The number of fellows is limited to 60. All of them are leaders in different engineering disciplines and have made significant contributions to Hong Kong. No more than 8 fellows are elected every year.
Professor Chow was interviewed by the media on the election and his associated engineering activities. He explained the fire problems in dense urban areas including supertall buildings, large atria, subway stations and long tunnels. He also conducted an experiment on internal fire whirl induced in a vertical shaft model, and briefly introduced an on-going project on burning goods stacked up by parallel traders in a train car.
There are possible conflicts between green building designs and fire safety. A recent explosion in a small restaurant in Ma On Shan involving clean refrigerant hydrocarbons of a packaging air-conditioning system is an obvious example. Another big fire broke out in a high-rise residential building on 11 April 2013. The fire was suspected to be started from an explosion of an air-conditioner, the details have to be investigated. During that fire, the fire hydrant did not work as expected. It took the firemen over an hour to install the fire engine which can pump water up. It is obvious that more research on high-rise buildings in this part of the world including Hong Kong and China Mainland should be carried out in order to propose the design guides for fire safety provisions.
In pointing out the importance of fire engineering research in Hong Kong, Professor Chow reported that many fire phenomena here are unique, which have not been observed overseas. Examples are the fires in supertall buildings and stations that are built deep underground. In court investigation of the hawker stall fire in Fa Yuen Street in November 2011, the judge was not convinced that the study, which did not come up with a clear conclusion, was done thoroughly. More fire research should be conducted to avoid large-scale fires.
Signed: WK Chow, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
News from International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering The second cohort of IMFSE students graduated on the 24th of June 2013. 16 students from 14 different countries are now fresh Fire Safety Engineers. The graduation day event was held in the historical city of Ghent and was attended by the students, their families and friends.
The IMFSE consortium (Ghent University, Lund University and The University of Edinburgh) is happy to expand, welcoming The University of Queensland (Australia) and ETH (Switzerland) as Associated Partners. In 2014 the first IMFSE student will already perform his master thesis at The University of Queensland. All info on IMFSE on: http://www.imfse.ugent.be
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News from Imperial College London The Imperial Haze Lab at the Department of Mechanical Engineering continues to grow.
An article on July 25th in the construction magazine Engineering-News Record highlights recent research that Dr Rein led on the behavior of fires inside modern buildings. It is about the new design concept of ‘travelling fires' which offers a paradigm shift in the structural engineering of modern buildings. The work has directly impacted the way industry designs modern infrastructure and has already been applied to design six iconic buildings in London, Manchester and Birmingham. Coincidentally, Arup and EPSRC have recently agreed to contribute funding to the continuation of the travelling fires work that our new PhD student, Egle Rackauskaite, is conducting. Egle is a Civil Engineer (1st Class MEng, Loughborough University) originally from Lithuania.
Our PhD student Xinyan Huang is spending the summer in a series of international exchanges. First he visited the National University of Singapore, working with the group of Prof Bala measuring the gas emissions from smouldering peat. He is now visiting SKSF in China working with the group of Prof Chen on the computational modeling of smouldering fires.
Dr Rein gave the Keynote Lecture at the 4th International Meeting of Fire Effects on Soil Properties, in the pretty and small city of Vilnius. The title was "Fate of Organic Matter and Pyrogenic Char in Smouldering Fires: when soils burn to ash". The talk made direct references to the ongoing haze episode in South East Asia, caused by smouldering peat megafires. Like most organic soils, peat is flammable, and dry peat is extremely flammable.
We are delighted to announce that our paper “Study of the competing chemical reactions in the initiation and spread of smouldering combustion in peat” has received the 2013 Distinguished Paper Award on Fire Research at the 34th International Symposium on Combustion. This research award is given biannually by the Combustion Institute. The work studies the chemistry of smouldering combustion of peat. Peat fires, like those causing haze episodes in South East Asia, are the largest fires on Earth but a poorly understood, yet extensive source of greenhouse gases, and are emerging as a hot topic in climate-change mitigation. These novel combustion experiments provide the framework to study smouldering dynamics by carefully varying the controlling mechanisms and providing burning conditions that otherwise cannot be obtained.
As Editor-in-Chief of Fire Technology, Rein is delighted to announce that the journal merges with the Journal of Fire Protection Engineering (SPFE) with effective date of January 1, 2014. This creates an even stronger journal than the sum of the two, and Fire Technology becomes the official journal of the NFPA and the SPFE.
Signed: Guillermo Rein, Imperial College London
News from Lund University The Department of Fire Safety Engineering and System Safety has moved to a new location on the Lund University campus due to refurbishment of our old location. We are no located in the so-called Chemistry building. The move has required a lot of attention during the last semester but now we are all moved. Our new visiting address can be retrieved from our webpage
EDUCATION: The autumn semester started in the end of august and we welcomed 50 new students to our Bachelor program in Fire Safety Engineering. The students are looking forward to an intense three and a half year study period, which also can led them in on our masters program in Risk Management and Safety Engineering. During the 2013 spring semester we had the entire class of students from the International Master in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE) in Lund. This was the third year we welcomed the students from this international program that we run jointly with the Universities in Gent and Edinburgh. The students have been very well motivated and performed well in our courses in Advanced Fire Dynamics, Simulation of Fires in Enclosures, Risk Assessment and Human Behaviour in Fire. During the spring we have had presentations of final theses of the students in the bachelor program in Fire Safety Engineering and the master program in Risk Management and Safety Engineering at two different occasions. Several of the theses are available in English at http://www.brand.lth.se/publications.
RESEARCH: The fire research group at the department has grown during the last years and group has a high competence in fire modelling and human behaviour in fires. Recently we have started a new large research project called FIRE TOOLS together with The Danish Institute of Fire and Security Technology (DBI). The European Union Seventh Framework Programme funds the project and five fulltime PhD students are working in it. The students will carry out research with a focus on creating computing simulation methodologies, tools and
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models to increase the usability of fire tests conducted on building materials, products and construction elements which act as building linings, building content or fire barriers by using fire simulations. The project was presented at the DTU/Lund Fire Safety Day at Lyngby and as a poster at Interflam in June. In addition, people from Lund University gave three presentations and three more posters were presented at Interflam. A large part of the fire research group from the Department of Fire Safety Engineering and Systems Safety was present at Interflam in June. The department have got financing for two new projects during the spring from the Swedish Fire Research Board (Brandforsk). In the first project walking speeds upwards in stairs will be studied, the second project will have a focus on validation and evaluation of the CFD code FireFoam. Our research project on technical systems to prevent and mitigate the consequences of arson in school buildings have been finalized during the spring. The project was finished with three open seminars together with three other projects that have been funded through the special initiative by the Swedish Fire Research Board (Brandforsk) on arson. The project has got a lot of attention and more than 300 people attended the seminars.
APPOINTMENTS AND AWARDS: Ulrica Pettersson defended her PhD thesis: ”Improving Incident Reports in the Swedish Armed Forces” on the 2nd of April. Professor Haukur Ingason and associate professor Daniel Nilsson have been appointed to Reader (Docent in Swedish) at Lund University during spring 2013. Associate Professor Bjarne Husted will join the department from the 1st of October 2013. Bjarne received his PhD from Lund University in 2009 and has been working at Stord/Haugesund University College and University of Stavanger as an associate professor during the last couple of years. We are very happy to welcome Bjarne back to Lund University.
Signed: Nils Johansson Lund University
News from University of Maryland A research paper co-authored by James Milke, FPE graduate student Robin Zevotek, P.E., and Thomas Fabian, Ph.D., of Underwriters Laboratories Inc. (UL) has received the Ronald K. Mengel award for best fire detection research presentation at a Fire Protection Research Foundation conference. The paper, "Cooking Fire Prevention," summarizes an experiment aimed at determining if precursors to cooking fires can help prevent the incidents. Researchers at UL conducted a series of 11 cooktop fire scenarios using everyday food items, including meat, vegetables and cooking oil. The data collected by UL was analyzed at the University of Maryland. Results showed that carbon monoxide and the concentration of smoke were the best predictors of cooktop fires. The resulting data be used to predict an impending fire early enough to prevent the fire from occurring. The paper was presented at the 2013 Fire Protection Research Foundation's Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Conference in February. The Fire Protection Research Foundation supports the National Fire Protection Association's mission to "reduce the worldwide burden of fire and other hazards on the quality of life by providing and advocating consensus codes and standards, research, training, and education."
Fire protection engineering student Isaac Leventon has been selected as the recipient of the 2013 Society for Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) Engineering and Scientific Foundation Student Scholar Award. He was selected for his work entitled "A Novel Approach to Predicting Upward Flame Spread over Polymers". Isaac will give a 30 min presentation based on his work at the SFPE Annual Meeting on Tuesday, October 29, 2013, in Austin, Texas.
Clark School Fire Protection Engineering Assistant Professor Stanislav Stoliarov spoke on July 1, 2013, at the European meeting on Fire Retardancy and Protection of Materials (FRPM) in Lille, France. Stoliarov's plenary talk, "Engineering Flame Resistant Materials using Numerical Simulations," provided an overview of ThermaKin, a thermo-kinetic modeling of polymer burning behavior. Developed by the University of Maryland and the Federal Aviation Administration, ThermaKin is capable of modeling pyrolysis, which is a chemical change brought on by the action of heat, and combustion of a wide range of polymeric materials including composites. The biennial FPRM conference brings together leaders in the fire protection community to discuss the latest in fire retardant polymer materials and the field of fire protection.
James Milke, P.E., Ph.D., professor and chair of the Fire Protection Engineering Department, gave a guest lecture at the NASA Safety Center on May 21, 2013. Dr. Milke’s lecture focused on the performance of passive and active fire protection systems. Passive systems include fire doors and penetration seals, while active systems include fire detection and suppression systems. His presentation was based on surveys from inspections and fire incident reports. The lecture series is hosted by the NASA Safety Center’s Operational Safety group at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has highlighted Dr. Andre W. Marshall's research in fire suppression systems on its Science, Engineering & Education (SEE) Innovation website. Dr. Marshall's research, which is funded by a NSF grant, is focused on measuring discharge characteristics from fire sprinklers to support the development of models used to predict the formation and dispersion of sprays from sprinklers. This research has already led to advancements in the ways fire suppression system sprays are analyzed and measured. Future
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implications could include improved performance of sprinkler systems through better design of the sprinkler heads, improved fire protection engineering practices used in codes and standards, and the optimization of fire suppression systems.
Signed: Peter Sunderland, University of Maryland
News from NFPA and FPRF The Fire Protection Research Foundation recently completed two projects on lithium ion battery storage hazards. The Foundation and its affiliated Property Insurance Research Group (PIRG) requested a study of the flammability of Li-ion batteries in bulk storage to inform the development of sprinkler protection criteria. The first phase consisted of a literature review that looked at battery technology, failures, usage, applicable codes and standards and a hazard assessment. The second phase covered full-scale testing of three types of small format batteries. The study was conducted in collaboration with commercial and industrial insurer FM Global and contained two test series conducted at their research facility. The first evaluated the free burn fire growth patterns of three types of common Li-ion batteries stored in cardboard cartons with an external ignition scenario. The second evaluated the performance of sprinklers in protecting analogous commodities. Videos from three fire tests, which were part of the research, can be viewed on YouTube. The project final reports can be found at: 2013 Lithium Ion Batteries Hazard and Use Assessment Ph. IIB, and 2011 Lithium Ion Batteries Hazard and Use Assessment.
STUDENT PROJECTS: Each year, in conjunction with NFPA technical committees, the FPRF identifies a range of projects to meet their information needs. Some of these projects are small literature reviews or assessments that might be well met by a graduate or senior level undergraduate student. The concept is to match the interests of students with the project needs of the technical committees. These projects are not subject to the Foundation’s normal competitive proposal process, and projects are available on a first come-first serve basis. The Foundation provides a small technical oversight panel that guides the project.
Signed: Rita Fahy and Amanda Kimball, NFPA
News from State Key Laboratory of Fire Science Professor Weicheng Fan, Director of the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS), together with other six distinguished people, received honorary degrees from Loughborough University, UK, on July 16-17, 2013. Prof. Fan was presented the Honorary Doctor of Technology Degree of the university, in recognition of his outstanding contribution and pioneering work in the fields of fire safety science and public safety technology. The other distinguished people who received honorary degrees are Professor Neil Halliwell, Dr. Clive Hickman, Professor Shirley Pearce, Charlie Mayfield, Adrian Moorhouse MBE and Professor Michael Withers.
Prof. Fan was the founder of SKLFS. Since 1980s, he has been engaged in research on fire safety science and engineering for over 30 years, with numerous accomplishments in theoretical models of various fire phenomena and numerical simulation of smoke in compartments. By his great leadership, SKLFS has developed rapidly to be one of the world’s most eminent fire laboratories. Prof. Fan was a pioneer for the Asia-Oceania Association for Fire Safety Science and Technology (AOAFST). In 1991, Prof. Fan, Prof. Toshisuke Hirano and Prof. Victor K. Bulgakov together initiated the establishment process of AOAFST. Prof. Fan ever held the President of AOAFST for six years (1995-2000). Now AOAFST has developed rapidly to be an important part of the IAFSS. Prof. Fan won the China National Award for Science and Technology Progress twice (2001, 2006), by his great contributions to fire safety technologies. In 2004, Prof. Fan established the Center for Public Safety Research at Tsinghua University, which was later renamed to be the Institute of Safety Science and Technology. Prof. Fan has made distinguished contributions to public safety science in China. He has been one of the pioneers for the establishment of the academic discipline of Safety Science and Engineering, which has been listed as one of the First-Level Discipline in Graduate Education of China since 2011. Also by the his efforts together with other distinguished researchers, Public Safety Science and Technology has been recognized as one of the key fields in China National Guideline on Medium- and Long-Term Program for Science and Technology (2006-2020). During the past decade, Prof. Fan successfully established a China National Emergency System for fires and other disasters. In 2011, he won the First Prize of China National Award for Science and Technology Progress.
Signed: NaiAn Liu, State Key Laboratory of Fire Science
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 12
News from SP In recent years SP Fire Technology has grown considerably. With a total staff of over 80, the research staff is now close to 50 of which 18 have PhDs, 7 are PhD students and the remainder have engineering degrees within one of the engineering sciences (i.e. civil, fire safety, mechanical or chemical). Traditional research fields have included active and passive fire protection, tunnel fire safety, industrial fire safety and reaction-to-fire. In recent years this has branched out to include complex fire characterization (both chemical and thermal), sustainability, risk assessment and resilience, tactical response, and human behavior, often in collaboration with research partners nationally and abroad. We presently have several interesting EU projects underway (Fire-Resist, SafePellets, Adam4Eve and DEROCA) and four more in negotiation at the time of writing. Our on-going EU projects deal with material development and sustainability
(Fire-Resist, Adam4Eve and DEROCA), and fuel storage safety (SafePellets). The SP website is undergoing a total overhaul but new information concerning these and other research projects is regularly posted there in English.
As well as research, our core activities include standardization and certification. We naturally aim to implement output of our research activities in our other commercial areas. One successful research area over the past 7 years has been fires in bus engine compartments - this has resulted in the development of a new SP test standard; SP method 4912 for testing fire suppression systems in engine compartments of buses and coaches and as a further suppression system quality assurance, SP has also established a voluntary certification and quality mark – the P-mark – according to SPCR 183 (SP Certification Rules). Several companies are at present running tests at SP in order to obtain the P-mark and recently the first issued P-mark certificate in accordance with SPCR 183 was published at: www.sp.se/safebus/certified where future issued certificates also will be published. More information can be found at: http://www.sp.se/safebus
Further, news about ongoing and recently finished research projects and other interesting industrial activities are summarized in our twice yearly Brandposten magazine. In addition, SP publish reports of recent research projects as results become public. Below are summaries of reports published in the last 6 months. All of the reports are available from our webpage: SP Report 2012:04: Thermal exposure to a steel column from localized fires; SP Report 2012:49: Use of small-scale methods for assessment of risk for self-heating of biomass pellets; SP Report 2012:50: Medium-scale reference tests and calculations of spontaneous ignition in wood pellets – the LUBA project; SP Report 2012:66: Fire risks associated with batteries; SP report 2013:12: Scaling of internal wall temperatures in enclosure fires; SP report 2013:13: Correlations between different scales of metro carriage fire tests; SP report 2013:15: Investigation of fire emissions from Li-ion batteries.
Signed: David Lange, Margaret Simonson McNamee and Fredrik Rosén, SP
News from WPI The research project will address needs identified by the National Association of State Fire Marshals, the Fire Protection Research Foundation and the National Fire Service Research Agenda to understand, quantify and address fire performance challenges of green or sustainable buildings as they impact firefighter safety. The objectives are to begin quantifying fire performance of green building features, to develop a screening tool to aid in identifying risk-significant green building features and appropriate mitigation options, and to better prepare the fire service for fighting fires in green buildings. In achieving these objectives we aim to: (a) Develop and test means by which to collect fire incident data specific to domestic fires involving green building features; (b) Quantify increased fire hazards or risks, or decreased fire performance, associated with green building features; (c) Develop a screening tool to aid fire risk and hazard assessment of green buildings; (d) Investigate modifications to firefighting tactics as appropriate to green building technologies, and; (e) Develop fire service education and training materials on safety hazards and tactics for green buildings.
Outcomes from this effort will contribute directly to reducing the potential for fire ground injuries and deaths by facilitating recognition of green building related hazards and adopting tactical responses appropriate to expected fire environments and structural performance given contemporary construction and fire loads.
Project partners include the University of Maryland (UMD), the Massachusetts Department of Fire Services (MA DFS), the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), and the Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF). The Principal Investigator is Brian Meacham (WPI) and co-investigators are Nicholas Dembsey (WPI), Michael Gollner (UMD) and Andre Marshall (UMD).
About the IAFSSInternational Association for Fire Safety ScienceInterscience Communications LtdWest Yard House, Guildford Grove, London SE10 8JT, UK. Tel: + 44 0208 692 5050 Fax: +44 0208 692 5155 Email: [email protected]://www.iafss.org/
IAFSS was founded with the primary objective of encouraging research into the science of preventing and mitigating the adverse effects of fires and of providing a forum for presenting the results of such research. The International Association for Fire Safety Science perceives its role to lie in the scientific bases for achieving progress in unsolved fire problems. It will seek cooperation with other organizations, be they concerned with application or with the sciences that are fundamental to our interests in fire. It will seek to promote high standards, to encourage and stimulate scientists to address fire problems, to provide the necessary scientific foundations and means to facilitate applications aimed at reducing life and property loss. Since its inaugural meeting, the IAFSS has grown to more than four hundred members.
Current members come from Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Holland, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom and United States of America. The Association is legally established as a charitable organization in England and Wales
If you were not an IAFSS member you will be receiving a one-year membership with the International Association for Fire Safety Science by having registered for this conference, a $40 value. BENEFITS OF IAFSS MEMBERSHIPIAFSS Symposia attendance at special member ratesDiscounted Annual Subscription Fees to Fire Safety Journal, the official Journal of IAFSSFree Access to Springer’s Fire TechnologyNewslettersMembership list with contact detailsA vote in association affairsDiscounted Symposium Proceedings
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 14
It is 40 years since David Rasbash was appointed to head the new Department of Fire Engineering at Edinburgh University. Its creation was due to the foresight
of one man, Frank Rushbrook, Firemaster of Edinburgh and South-East Scotland from 1959 to 1970. He had come to realise that the gap between the existing fire engineers – almost 100% of whom were acting and retired Fire Brigade Officers
– and members of the other, well established professional engineering disciplines (Civil, Mechanical, Electrical and Chemical) was rapidly becoming
unbridgeable as a consequence of the rapid advances in science and technology that had been made since the Second World War. Graduate engineers were
urgently required in the UK Fire Service and Rushbrook took the bold step of proposing that a tailor-made undergraduate degree in Fire Engineering be developed as the best option to advance the capabilities of the Fire Service.
His vision was about two decades ahead of its time, but thanks to a great leap of faith by Sir Michael Swann, then Vice-Chancellor, Edinburgh University agreed to establishing the fledgling Department. David Rasbash proved to be the ideal person to undertake the challenge of its development although when he arrived in Edinburgh it was to face a blank canvas. Fire Protection Engineering had been taught at the Illinois Institute of Technology since the early 20th Century, but in 1973, Fire Engineering did not exist as a graduate academic discipline. Rasbash graduated in Chemical Engineering at Imperial College, London in the 1940s and had been with the Fire Research Station (FRS), Borehamwood, for over 25 years. During this time, he worked on an astonishing range of topics, mostly at a fundamental level, applying his keen intellect and boyish enthusiasm for each one – and building up an overview of the field that we now define as “fire safety engineering”. He was the main contributor to 50 of the Fire Research Notes that were published by FRS up until the 1970s. These included studies of gas explosions in buildings and in ducts; the properties of sprays of water droplets; the suppression of pool fires; the fundamentals of ignition and extinction; smoke production and visibility through fire gases; and the formation of carbon monoxide in compartment fires. In addition, he was closely associated with the early work on detection and served as Chairman of the European Committee on Fire Detection (CEN/WG 72). Serendipitously, in 1966, he undertook a review of the courses on Fire Technology that were then available in the United States.
At a time before the word “holistic” was in common use, it might be said that David Rasbash had a truly holistic view of “fire safety engineering”. He made this very clear in his Inaugural Lecture “New Variation on an Old Theme” [1] in which he emphasised the fact that fire phenomena – as distinct from “combustion” – had not been subjected to rigorous scientific studies. He introduced his audience to some of the fundamentals that had been tackled after the Second World War, mainly in the UK, Japan and the USA and indicated how he saw the new department developing this research further.
However, Rushbrook’s vision was of a department that would prove a stream of graduate engineers that would enter and promote the professionalism of the Fire Service. This required the establishment of an academic programme which could be based on a curriculum that included fire science and engineering as well as the traditional sub-disciplines associated with fire technology (sprinkler design, smoke extract systems, evacuation, risk assessment, etc.), but underpinned by a fundamental understanding of the scientific principles of fire. At that time fundamental understanding was incomplete and there were no textbooks on which a curriculum could be based. The curriculum with which the Edinburgh Masters’ Degree programme which started in 1974 was drawn up by David Rasbash and refined during the subsequent years, eventually published in Fire Safety Journal of which he was editor at the time [2]. The content of the curriculum was based on material from a wide range of sources, including the Fire Research Notes, publications from the Centre for Fire Research (National Bureau of Standards, USA), Factory Mutual Research Corporation (USA), the Building Research Institute in Japan and the active fire group at the University of Lund, Sweden, led by Professor Ove Petterson.
The material for much of the course drew on original research papers and reports, reflecting the diversity of the discipline. Rasbash organised the International Symposium on Fire Safety of Combustible Materials that was held in Edinburgh in 1976, bringing together for the first time individuals from National Fire Laboratories in 8 countries who had never before had the opportunity to meet and discuss common problems and interests.
FEATURED ARTICLE
David Rasbash and the Department of Fire Engineering by Dougal Drysdale1 and Jack Watts2
1 University of Edinburgh, UK 2 Fire Safety Institute, USA
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 15
Common approaches were identified and there were clear signs of the development of a unified understanding. In his closing remarks at the Symposium, Rasbash used a musical metaphor to describe the state of the subject at that time. He compared it to a Sibelius symphony in which the audience becomes aware of bits of melody as the music develops, gradually being woven together to create the final melodic lines that make up the whole.
Not only was David Rasbash responsible for creating the structure of what we now call “Fire Safety Engineering”, but along with (inter alia) Philip Thomas, Kunio Kawagoe, Ove Petterson and Jim Quintiere he was one of the founder members of the IAFSS, as well as actively working towards the establishment of a professional Engineering Institute for Fire Safety Engineers in the UK. This was eventually recognised by the UK Engineering Council who encouraged the fledgling Society of Fire Safety Engineers to combine with the Institution of Fire Engineers to develop a single body to ensure the standards in the profession. This amalgamation took place in 2004.
Sadly, David Rasbash did not live to see this happen as he passed away after a long illness in 1997 but he will be remembered for the crucial contribution he made to Fire Safety Engineering world-wide. His legacy is evident in the professionals he mentored and the students to whom he imparted his enthusiasm and singular appreciation of the discipline. He is recognised by the Institution of Fire Engineers by the annual award of the Rasbash Medal.
REFERENCES
1. D J Rasbash, New Variation on an Old Theme, Inaugural Lecture, University of Edinburgh, 14th November 1974 (http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/5574)
2. D J Rasbash, A modular approach to the subject of Fire Safety Engineering, Fire Safety Journal 3 31-40 (1980).
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 16
It was not long after the Department of Fire Engineering was formed in Edinburgh in 1973 that the University took an international lead in developing the first post-graduate programme in fire safety engineering. Some of the historical context can be appreciated by an examination of the inaugural lecture of Professor David Rasbash [1], given in the following year, and in which the very notion of a whole university department devoted to fire required some explaining – and in which the subject was suggested to be neither a man nor a fish but perhaps a representative of a gawky new species! Safety was a core element and indeed the name of the department was updated to “Fire Safety Engineering” in 1975.
The number of students recruited each year was fairly variable but a total of 69 graduated from this initial MSc programme, mainly between 1974 and 1983, with the final few in 1990-91. The list of graduates can be perused on the current fire group website [2] and it includes many who have been influential and indeed distinguished in developing our discipline, be it within academia, research or industry. Though PhD level study continued in the intervening years (12 graduates 1980-1997) it is only in recent years that taught post-graduate programmes have resumed at Edinburgh, with an undergraduate degree also running since 2005. These developments were initiated and brought to fruition thanks largely to the efforts and vision of Professor José Torero, now in pastures new at Queensland, Australia, but his legacy continues and indeed the volume of activity in fire safety engineering education is still growing. It is timely to make some brief comments on the nature of this education and the way we see it continuing to develop in future years.
Photo of the Edinburgh fire group attending the 2011 IAFSS Symposium in Maryland.
Our undergraduate degree in Structural and Fire Safety Engineering is related to the mainstream Civil Engineering programme, with most fire options being taken in the honours years. These span several taught courses each of 10 credits (20 h lecture equivalent) in Fire science and fire dynamics, Fire dynamics laboratory, Current methods in fire safety engineering, Quantitative methods in fire safety engineering, Fire resistance of structures, and a Fire design project (becoming 20 credits in 2013/2014). In addition the final year dissertation will typically be a fire research topic, done in pairs, and amounting to 60 credits, i.e. half of the final year. The
FEATURED ARTICLE
Fire Safety Engineering Education at the University of Edinburgh by Stephen Welch, University of Edinburgh, UK
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 17
first student graduated from this degree in 2005, with a steady increase in numbers thereafter up to 2013 when 9 Master in Engineering (MEng) and 2 Bachelor in Engineering (BEng) students graduated, a total of 29 to date. 2014 will see yet another increase, with 17 fire degree students now entering the final year, which is approximately 20% of those undertaking undergraduate degrees within the overall discipline of Civil Engineering. However the impact and influence of the programmes extends well beyond the fire degree students themselves, with different courses being provided as options to mainstream Civil Engineering degree students and indeed others from Mechanical and Chemical Engineering. Subscribers to our most popular course (Fire science and fire dynamics) exceeded 100 for the first time in the last academic year.
In parallel our MSc programme in Structural and Fire Safety Engineering (SAFE) commenced in 2008 and has now graduated 20 students, with the current class numbering 10 students and applications increasing year on year. Half of the credits are from taught courses, overlapping in some cases with the undergraduate classes, though fire safety engineering is delivered as a dedicated option which spans design philosophy and learning of practical approaches by means of application to a fairly complex case study (a theatre). The remainder of the programme is the research project, divided into review and pre-dissertation courses running in the first two semesters followed by the main dissertation work undertaken in the final study block in summer.
The International Master in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE), a three-way programme with universities of Ghent and Lund running over four semesters, is described in detail elsewhere in this issue [3]. Students on our MSc in Structural Engineering and Mechanics, delivered jointly with the University of Glasgow, also take some fire course options and a number of them choose fire topics for their research dissertations. Finally we run annual Continuous Professional Development (CPD) courses, a very long-standing one in Fire investigation and usually another in Fire Safety Engineering, as well as a nearly annual conference (FireSeat).
The success of these programmes is evident in the high degree of employability of graduates, the vast majority proceeding rapidly to relevant jobs, mainly in fire consultancies. Nevertheless despite the increasing number of graduates growth in demand continues to greatly outstrip the supply!
The academic content of our fire degree programmes is something we take very seriously and indeed has in itself been the subject of recent PhD level research. PhD student Michael Woodrow and his supervisors have recently produced a white paper on “A nascent educational framework for fire safety engineering” [4] which includes much thoughtful analysis of the unique nature of our discipline and the requirements which thereby emerge for methods of effective education. The paper was a key outcome of the initial “Global Technical Leadership Seminar in Fire Safety Engineering” in 2011 [5], a series sponsored by the Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust (now the Lloyd’s Register Foundation). It highlights the fact that as the application of design approaches and methods continues to evolve within the freedoms allowed by performance-based fire safety engineering so too must our approaches to education. Because of the need for graduates who are flexible and adaptable their learning must instil both sound fundamental knowledge but perhaps even more importantly encourage appropriate skills and attitudes, i.e. those demanded by environments where will be no absolutes in design approach and boundaries continue to expand due to all manner of innovation and creativity. Suggestions made to address these unique requirements for learning emphasise purpose-centred education broadly focused on design, with an appropriate balance between fundamentals and professional skills. It is observed that the latter can often only be truly developed by doing fire safety engineering, thus contra to many traditional educational methods. The value of ‘studio’ approaches, with iteration to an acceptable solution, is therefore apparent, with examples given from one of our courses. I would encourage anyone with even a passing interest in education in fire to study this paper carefully and consider the implications for the further evolution of our discipline.
REFERENCES
1. Dougal Drysdale and Jack Watts, David Rasbash and the Department of Fire Engineering, Fire Safety Science News 35, 2013 (this same issue).
2. List of fire safety engineering graduates at Edinburgh, http://www.eng.ed.ac.uk/fire/people.html
3. Bart Merci, International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE): An International Effort Coordinated by Ghent University, Fire Safety Science News 35, 2013 (this same issue).
4. M Woodrow, L Bisby and JL Torero, A nascent educational framework for fire safety engineering, Fire Safety Journal 58, 2013, pp 180–194, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2013.02.004
5. Luke Bisby, Defining the Future of Fire Safety Engineering Education, Edinburgh Fire Research Blog, 2011 (http://edinburghfireresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/defining-future-of-fire-safety.html)
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 18
The University of Canterbury fire engineering programme awards four post-graduate qualifications: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Fire Engineering, Master of Engineering in Fire Engineering (MEFE), Master of Engineering Studies in Fire Engineering (MEngSt(Fire)) and a Postgraduate Certificate in Fire Engineering (PGCert(Fire)). The MEFE qualification requires the completion of six courses and a full-time research thesis. The MEngSt(Fire) qualification can be achieved solely by coursework or by a combination of coursework and a research project. The coursework-only route requires the completion of a mixture of eight core and approved courses in fire engineering. Alternatively, the qualification can be attained by six core and approved courses plus a project. Full-time study takes one year and part-time study normally takes three to four years. Finally the PGCert(Fire) qualification is attained by completing four core courses. Full-time study takes 6 months and part-time study normally takes 18 months to two years. The PhD is the only qualification that is attained entirely through research. Typically the programme has 4 or 5 PhD students, around 5-10 full-time masters or certificate students and 15-20 part-time masters or certificate students enrolled at any time.
Courses are normally taught in ‘block mode’ to enable practising engineers to take part. A course taught in ‘block mode’ typically involves attending two 3-day blocks, one in each term. The blocks include laboratory work, site visits, tutorials and the opportunity to interact with other students. The remainder of the time students use a web-based system to complete assignments etc. Regular course offerings are fire dynamics, advanced fire dynamics, structural fire engineering, fire safety systems, risk assessment and case study design. Additional courses are occasionally offered particularly when a visiting lecturer is available through a scheme called the Erskine Fellowship. Recently courses on human behaviour and industrial fire safety have been or are about to be offered in this way.
Visit of University of Canterbury post-graduate research students to BRANZ during the fire testing of timber floors as part of James O’Neill’s PhD research. Fire students shown are Jakob Studhalter (first
from left), James O’Neill (6th from left), Dennis Pau (8th from left) along with Andy Buchanan (5th from left).
In addition to the post-graduate courses, we also offer a one semester fire engineering course to all senior under-graduate engineering students. This course covers a wide range of topics including fire dynamics, active and passive systems, human behaviour, wildfires, risk and regulations. Typically around 40 – 50 students do this course from the civil, electrical, mechanical and chemical engineering programmes. The course is also offered
FEATURED ARTICLE
Fire safety engineering education at the University of Canterbury by Michael Spearpoint, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 19
through a two-week block during the summer school period which is particularly useful for people in industry and those who are planning to do one of the post-graduate programmes described above.
Challenges and opportunities
The programme is very fortunate to have the continued support of the New Zealand Fire Service Commission that has enabled the University to maintain a lectureship position and offer several scholarships to domestic students. The programme has also benefited from a number of collaborative arrangements and in particular the ongoing relationship with BRANZ has been very productive.
The effects of the major earthquakes that hit the Canterbury region in 2010 and 2011 are still being felt by the University. There can be no doubt that there has been a reduction in the overall number of students studying at the University and coupled with the cost of repairing and upgrading buildings this has placed a strain on resources. However these negative impacts have also presented new opportunities to the University and specifically to the fire engineering programme. Plans are currently underway to expand the fire engineering laboratory facilities as part of the reconstruction. This laboratory will substantially larger than what we currently have, it will include a 4 MW calorimeter, additional capabilities for structural fire testing, increased water flow and pressure capacity and other upgrades.
There is a huge demand for engineers to be part of the Canterbury post-earthquake rebuild and this again presents challenges and opportunities. On the one hand this demand for engineers includes fire engineers which then has the potential to attract more students into our programmes. On the other hand with so many job options available to new graduates then many are not looking to pursue a fire engineering career.
In terms of fire engineering in New Zealand there have been some recent changes to the regulatory system that place the country in a unique position. The introduction of a new Verification Method (VM) to meet the performance-based fire safety requirements of the New Zealand Building Code requires that designers have a strong fire engineering background. Speaking with a number of the graduates from our programme it is clear that they are very busy working with the new VM on top of the Canterbury rebuild and these are placing more demand on the need to have sufficiently trained and educated fire engineers around the country.
In the longer term, as the impacts of the earthquakes diminish, the University will be able to complete its upgrading or replacement of buildings and attract new students to study in Christchurch. The fire engineering programme will have enhanced laboratory facilities, be able to expose students to the distinctive challenges of fire engineering in New Zealand and continue to create highly educated graduates who will contribute to the profession both in New Zealand and around the world.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 20
The State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS), which is located at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), is the only national level research institution in the field of fundamental fire research in China. The mission of SKLFS is to study fire dynamics & key technologies of fire safety, train qualified personnel and endeavor to cater for the growing national demand in fire science research and make fundamental, strategic and forward-looking contributions to the national fire safety. To meet this mission, SKLFS has step by step established the fire safety engineering (FSE) education system during the past 20 years. SKLFS offers the Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Master of Science in Engineering (M.S.), Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) and Doctor of Science in Engineering (Ph.D.) degrees. What follows is a brief summary of the history and development of the FSE education at SKLFS.
History
The program of FSE Education of USTC was promoted and initiated by Prof. Weicheng Fan at the Department of Engineering Thermophysics (later renamed as Department of Thermal Science & Energy Engineering) at USTC in early 1980s, although at that time the subject of FSE was not recognized as a high-level education subject in China. By the end of 1980s, although there had been four fire safety institutions respectively in Tianjin, Shanghai, Shenyang and Sichuan managed by the Ministry of Public Security of China, there was no institution or university which was devoted to the fundamental researches on fire safety. A major reason for the increased recognition of the importance of fire researches was the Wildland Fire in Daxinganling, Heilongjiang Province in May 1987. That huge fire last for nearly one month, leading to 1,330,000 ha of forest burned [1, 2]. It was the most serious forest fire since the foundation of the People's Republic of China (1949). After that fire, Prof. Weicheng Fan submitted a proposal to the central government for establishing a national institution of fundamental fire researches. His proposal was rapidly approved by the government in 1988. SKLFS was established in 1990. After then, SKLFS was separated from the Department of Engineering Thermophysics and became to be a dependent research center at USTC for FSE research and education.
Education
From 1990 to 1998, SKLFS offered degrees in conjunction with the Department of Engineering Thermophysics in the subject of Engineering Thermophysics. Later, respectively in 1998 and 2000, SKLFS was authorized to independently offer the Master of Science Degree and Doctor of Science Degree in the subject of “Safety Technology and Engineering”. This was absolutely a big step in the right direction, because it significantly expanded the size of the FSE graduate education programs. Before that, only 5-10 master’s and doctoral students were admitted annually. In comparison, today’s SKLFS FSE graduate programs have 40-60 master’s students and 30 doctoral students admitted annually. During the past 20 years, SKLFS has conferred over 800 graduate degrees, including over 200 Ph.D. degrees and over 600 master degrees (including the M.S. and M.Eng degrees). Additionally, SKLFS offered the B.S. degree in the subject of Engineering Thermophysics before 2003, after then SKLFS began to offer the B.S. degree in the subject of Safety Engineering. Nearly 20 freshman students are admitted annually. In 2004, SKLFS established the Department of Safety Science & Engineering which manages the undergraduate FSE program of SKLFS. Currently, SKLFS has 41 full-time instructors, including 21 professors, 18 associate professors and 2 lecturers. At the same time, many professors from other universities.
SKLFS pursues to keep itself at the very forefront of fire science discovery, for this SKLFS believes that for excellent fundamental fire research, the undergraduate students should acquire solid knowledge basis and capability of seeking deep understanding of the complex processes of fire dynamics. Therefore, the degree makes the students get strong knowledge background of mathematics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and combustion by courses design. For the B.S. FSE education, SKLFS tries to make the students step by step understand the roles of the designed courses in fire research. Therefore, SKLFS have some policies and activities to make the students achieve a strong linkage between courses learning and research activities. For the freshman students, SKLFS has a policy of “undergraduate tutor” for which each student chooses one teacher as his tutor. The responsibility of the tutors is to organize different activities on campus in order to make the students learn of the education and researches of SKLFS. This means that the students of SKLFS have the opportunity of participating in the research activities once they enter into the university. From the second year of the B.S. program, a program supported by USTC, named as “The College Student Research Program”, is open to all the students. The tutors will design some
FEATURED ARTICLE
Fire Safety Engineering Education at University of Science and Technology by Naian Liu, University of Science and Technology of China, China
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 21
small research projects fitting to the taught courses for the undergraduate students, who are required to finish the project research within 3 months under the instructions of their tutors. Such projects help the students develop the experimental and theoretical analysis capability. From the third year, the students will have many opportunities of participating in the research projects of SKLFS. All the students are required to finish their theses and make the oral defenses by the end of the fourth academic year for getting their B.S. degrees.
The master’s students of SKLFS are selected from several sources. For the M.S. degree, one part of the students is selected from the SKLFS undergraduate students according to their GPA grades up to the end of the 6th semester, and nearly 30% of the students can be chosen to directly enter into the graduate program with no examinations. The other part of the students is from other universities, selected by the Graduate Candidate Test. The program of M.Eng degree is designed for part-time students who must take two months each year on campus for learning courses, and take part-time study to finish their theses for getting their degrees. The doctoral students of SKLFS are mainly selected from the M.S. degree students, according to their academic performance within the first two years of the graduate program. The selection of doctoral students is very strict, because the tutors and the students both have the responsibility of evaluation of the potentials of the students for getting the Ph.D degrees within three years. The basic requirements for getting Ph.D degrees include the publication of at least two papers in international journals (indexed by SCI or EI), and at the same time at least one oral presentation in international conferences in the field of fire safety engineering.
Challenges
Just as pointed out by Prof. Wanki Chow in this issue, “Fire Science and Engineering is a very small subject discipline. The number of journal papers published, and hence the number of citations, are much lower than other subjects [3]. This is a big threat to local universities developing Fire Engineering programmes.” We also recognize this to be a serious problem for the research assessment of SKLFS and also for the FSE education at SKLFS. The researches of the faculty and students of SKLFS often face strong competitions of other disciplines which hold much more journals available for publication. Fire safety engineering is a typical interdisciplinary field, with many journals (e.g. those in the fields of chemistry and materials) which are “marginal” for fire science but with much higher impact factors than the core journals in fire safety engineering. SKLFS encourages the students to publish their research results in the leading publications of fire safety. However the space available from these publications is too limited. Therefore some students also choose other journals outside fire safety, perhaps with higher impact factors, to publish their papers. Another challenge faced by SKLFS FSE education program is how to make balance between fundamental research and applied research. As indicated above, the B.S. and graduate education programs of SKLFS both emphasize on the basic and theoretical knowledge background of the students. In comparison, the courses in the respective of applied research and engineering are not so strong. One reason for this is that the major mission of State Key Laboratories (SKLs) in China is for top-level basic research and applied basic research. This problem is expected to be solved from the respective of policies of SKLFS. Firstly, more strong linkage with industry should be developed in order to get more fundings in applied FSE research. Second, the academic assessment rules should be critically studied to encourage the researchers and students to participate in more activities for technology innovation and fire standard/code study. Finally, more course programs closely related to applied FSE research should be developed.
REFERENCES
1. E D Ju, Forest Fires in the Daxinganling Region of China, May, 1987, Draft Manuscript, available at http://www.fireresearchinstitute.org
2. X Z Jin and B Y Cheng, The Characteristics of Forest Fire whirl wind (in Chinese), Journal of Natural Disasters 6(2) 34-41 (1997).
3. W. K. Chow and N. K. Fong, Education in Fire Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Fire Safety Science News 35.
The SKLFS group attending the 2011 IAFSS Symposium in Maryland.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 22
In the lead-up to the introduction of performance based fire safety codes in Denmark (introduced in 2004) it was realized that there would be an increased need for professionals with a fire safety engineering education. Hence, in 1999 the Master of Fire Safety was introduced in the department of Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). In 2011, the program became accredited by the Danish Accreditation Board. There are typically around 20-25 students enrolled in the program at any given time, and about 200 students have completed the education.
The Master in Fire Safety at DTU aims to qualify the students for positions in both private companies and public institutions by providing knowledge, skills and competences with a scientific basis. The intension is to give the candidates a wide range of competences within both prescriptive and performance based fire safety design. The newest developments within safety philosophy, design fire selection, construction dimensioning, evacuation and material testing are introduced in the courses. Though the education has a strong foundation in the Danish legislation for fire safety, the techniques, methods and skills that are permeating the education are mostly applicable anywhere in the world.
The core staff for the Master in Fire Safety at DTU depicted at the Fire Safety Day, April 2013 (from left to
right): Kristian Hertz (Professor), Grunde Jomaas (Associate Professor), Aldis Run Larusdottir (PhD Student), Annette Frøhling (Secretary), Luisa Giuliani (Assistant Professor), Anne Dederichs (Associate
Professor, Head of Studies), Annemarie Poulsen (Post-Doc) and Janne Gress Sørensen (PhD Student).
The graduates of the programs use their education in activities ranging from building permit handling at the public authorities through product development at material manufacturers, insurance handling at insurance companies, fire testing at accredited test institutions to fire design solutions at small and large engineering consulting firms. In addition, quite a few of the graduates work as fire chiefs and emergency management chiefs.
A key aspect of the program is that it creates a uniform understanding of fire safety for all stakeholders in the Danish fire safety community. As such, it is important that the program has both fundamental and practical aspects, and that is available to a large percentage of the people that are working with fire safety. This is reflected in the admission process, which has a strict requirement of at least two years of working experience. Typical students in the program are: Employees with working experience from municipal or national building authorities, fire brigades, emergency management agencies, architectural offices, consulting engineering firms, product developers and material manufacturers.
FEATURED ARTICLE
Master of Fire Safety Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark by Anne Dederichs and Grunde Jomaas, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 23
The program is a half-time (15 ECTS points per semester), module based program (meets 3 weeks per semester) with a total duration of 4 semesters (2 years). The typical availability is 3 courses per semester and each course meets 3 times 1½ day, and is evaluated either through laboratory reports, take-home exercises or exams.
In order to obtain the degree of Master in Fire Safety, the students have to complete 9 courses and conduct a 5-month thesis project (15 ECTS points), which has a strong focus on research methods and a logical presentation of new findings in view of the existing literature in the field. It is our experience that the latter is often relatively neglected in current design practice, as the focus is on getting a building permit, something which too often is achieved through conversations involving ‘gut feeling’ and ‘personal experience’ rather than well-documented facts.
The current program has the following structure (all courses are 5 ECTS points):
Semester 1 (Spring 2013) • Introduction to Building Fire Safety • Fire Dynamics • Fire Chemistry (with laboratory)
Semester 2 (Fall 2013) • Structural Fire Safety • Fire Modelling • Environmental Chemistry
Semester 3 (Spring 2014) • Fire Risk Management • Performance Based Fire Design • Fire Safety in Complex Structures OR Fire
Modelling 2
Semester 4 (Fall 2014) • Thesis Project
The courses in the program are predominantly taught by faculty members at DTU Civil Engineering. In addition, some courses are taught by other DTU faculty members and by professionals from the industry, the fire service and from consulting firms, and we find that this leads to fruitful knowledge exchange and a well-balanced range of experience and opinions.
The introduction of performance based fire design in Denmark in 2004 resulted in a significant increase of the use of fire modelling and Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) rapidly became the leading software in the Danish fire safety design solutions. This resulted in a need for an increased base of common understanding for how the program should be used and what should be considered as malpractice. A very impressive and positive outcome of this adverse condition was that the Danish fire safety community worked together to improve the fire safety in Denmark with an altruistic attitude that resulted in a Best Practice Document (in Danish) for the use of FDS in performance based design. The working group consisted of members from numerous engineering consulting firms, authorities and the fire service (approving instance). This document has not only streamlined the process of handling FDS-based design solutions, but it has also created a natural focus for the Fire Modelling classes at DTU. Although it has to be emphasized that nobody believes the Best Practice document is without fault, it still has had an enormous and positive impact on fire safety design in Denmark, as it has created uniformity in the thinking of fire modelling all the way from the education, via the design to the approval process.
Unlike many other countries, Denmark does not have a regulatory body for engineers, let alone for fire safety engineers. As such, anyone can call themselves a fire safety engineer and compete for and complete projects at any scale and level of complexity. Therefore, the natural next step for a country that has one centralized fire safety engineering program, the Master of Fire Safety at DTU, is to create a body that can regulate the body of fire safety practitioners and thereby ensure that all of them fulfil a minimum requirement when it comes to fire safety education. With such a requirement in place, the number of practitioners with a fire safety education will increase, and then it is again up to the educational institutions to ensure that this common platform meets the needs of the complexity of the modern built environment. Only then can the lacking body of input needed for proper performance based design be developed, and eventually we will be able to ensure optimal fire safety solutions rather than solutions that are ‘the best according to our current personal knowledge’. This process has yet a long way to go, but as it is extremely important, the members of the community should focus on making this a reality.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 24
It is quite complex to report on educational programmes, both at undergraduate and post graduate levels in France, since those programmes are managed by either Universities (Public or private) or so called Grandes Ecoles, the organization of which are quite different. However, this is an attempt to do so as far as FSE is dealt with, possibly not being a comprehensive overview.
In France, education in Fire Safety Engineering was very recently promoted, as regulatory opening to FSE techniques was quite recently implemented in relevant building codes. Indeed, actions towards FSE education have been initiated after a national program called “PN ISI” (2007-2013) was carried out. The aim of this program was to prepare France to performance-based codes, especially for building codes. A part of PN ISI was dedicated to the definition of education programs, and included a link to universities.
So far, we know of three schools preparing students to Fire Safety Engineering or closely related topics, all since 2010. These are (see also table in next page):
• INSA (Rouen) is an engineering school for general sciences. It proposes an optional module (post graduate degree) dedicated to FSE accessible in the 5th year after French “baccalaureat”, including 380 h of theory plus 6 months of practice in industry and services.
• University Aix-Marseille proposes a Master 2 degree (5th year after French “baccalauréat", corresponding to UK/US Master degree in science) specialized in FSE, with 350 hours of theory plus at least 4.5 months of practice in industry and services.
• ISMANS (Le Mans) proposes a post-graduate year dedicated to FSE for mechanical engineers, as a 6th year after bachelor. The formation is 450 h of theory plus 6 months of practice in industry and services.
Besides, University of Corte will welcome first classroom of students for a new Master degree (next academic year (2013/2014) focusing on ‘Major Hazards’, containing 5 learning modules (30 ECTS course based + 30 ECTS for 5 months internship) on a total of 120 ECTS in tight relation to FSE (including e.g. chemical reaction mechanisms and related kinetics in combustion, combustion, thermochemistry, flame temperature, pool fires, industrial fires, forest fires, modelling and simulation of natural fires, calorimetry. Contact point for this new Master degree is Prof. Eric LEONI ([email protected]). In addition, some courses are also present in IRIAF, University of Poitiers (Niort), and a complete education program is under preparation.
All these programs use both academic professors and industrial speakers. More details are available in the table 1 for main identified programmes. All students that successfully passed these degrees found a job quickly in few months, usually in the company in which they had their practice period, or they have decided to complete their education by a doctoral thesis in a related field.
PhD students need to be associated with an academic research laboratory and a university. Those dealing with fire are often affected to one of the following research institutes:
• Institut PPrimeUPR3346 CNRS (Université de Poitiers)
• IUSTI, UMR 6595 CNRS (Université Aix-Marseille)
• CORIA, UMR 6614 CNRS (INSA Rouen)
• LEMTA, UMR 7563 CNRS (Université de Lorraine)
Special fire related issues may justify that PhD students get associated with other French academic research laboratories (e.g. UTC, TIMR EA4297 for industrial fire safety in relation with biomass valorisation or transformation). For training in working life, technical centres also propose formations to Fire Safety Engineering or Fire Science or offer internship positions. We may name among others: LNE, INERIS, CNPP, CTICM, CERIB, CEA or CSTB. Some specialized organisations propose also specific thematic trainings, such as EUROSAE for fire hazard management in aircrafts.
FEATURED ARTICLE
Brief insight to Educational programmes on Fire Safety Engineering in France by Eric Guillaime1 and Guy Marlair2
1 Laboratoire national de métrologie et d’essais (LNE), France 2 INERIS,, France
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 25
INSA Rouen University Aix-Marseille ISMANS Le Mans
Location / University Rouen (Normandy, north-west)
Marseille, campus Chateau-Gombert (South-west)
Le Mans (West)
Formation title (original and translation)
Ingénierie de la sécurité Incendie et des Structures – ISIS
(Fire Safety and structural engineering)
Master 2 Sciences du feu & ingénierie de la sécurité incendie
(Master2 in Fire science and Fire Safety Engineering)
Mastère Ingénierie de la Sécurité Incendie (Mastère in Fire Safety Engineering)
Level (Bachelor +) 5 (Engineer degree)
5 (Master2)
6 (Mastère)
Type of diploma
Option for civil engineer and sustainable building degree. Also open to other
departments : Energy, mechanics, industrial risks
University degree Specialization for mechanical engineers
Year of first program 2010 2010 2010 Hours, theory 380 h 350 h 450 h
Program
4 modules: - Fire Safety Engineering (150 h)
o Basics on fire (30 h) o Fire protection (40 h) o Materials behaviour and structure
stability (30 h) o Fire safety practice (38 h) o Risk and fire fighting management (12
h) - Engineering of building vulnerability
against explosions (80 h) - Engineering of building in its environment
(70 h) - Regulation, codes, other general modules
(80h)
5 modules of 70 hours: - Engineer environment - Basics on fire - Fluid dynamics for fire - Fire resistance of structures - Regulation, codes and analysis of fire
6 modules: - Regulation and codes (25 h) - Materials science dedicated to fire (50 h) - Fire protection materials (20 h) - Reaction-to-fire of materials and fire
behaviour of structures - experimental approach (50 h)
- Risk analysis methods for fire (25 h) - Modelling and simulation tools for fire
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 26
Fire Safety has a long tradition in Germany, especially regarding fire safety regulations with fire testing and fire fighting. At the moment it is possible to study Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) at several Universities. However, Fire Safety Engineering is often addressed only after the master degree during the PhD. The author tries here to give an overview about the situation of Fire Safety Engineering in Germany but does not claim to be complete.
Since 1975 it is possible to study Safety Engineering at the Wuppertal University. Wuppertal was one of the first universities to realize the need of such an education, and FSE was part of it. The department Safety Techniques has now 14 divisions with 16 professors and 855 students. The programme contains FSE, safety of citizens, employment protection, protection of environment and quality management.
In Magdeburg, Otto-von-Guericke University and the University of Applied Sciences cooperatively conduct for the last 10 years the consecutive Bachelor and Master program Safety and Hazard Response. Annually, about 70 new students are selected for the Bachelor program on the base of an admission test covering physics, chemistry, mathematics, general knowledge and social competences. This program skills engineers with special expertise in fire and explosion protection, process safety, risk and disaster management and is headed by Prof. Michael Rost and Prof. Ulrich Krause. Since 2003 more than 400 students have graduated with a Bachelor degree, and about 150 with MSc. Up 28 of them have entered into the PhD programme and so far 3 have graduated already with PhD degrees. Both universities have own laboratories. Otto-von-Guericke University concentrates its experimental work on explosion testing for gases, dusts and hybrid mixtures and on exothermic reactions. A 20-l explosion sphere, different Hartmann-explosion-tubes, a Godbert-Greenwald furnace and a Pensky-Martin flashpoint apparatus are available as well as a simultaneous thermal and gas analysis.
The Institute of Fire Department Saxony Anhalt (IdF), Heyrothsberge, is an independent research institution under the responsibility of ministry of interior Saxony-Anhalt and was founded in 1967. The Institute has big test facilities with 4 fire halls / rooms (maximum height 20 m) and a 25 m long, 6.5 m² test tunnel (flexible equipment and defined experimental conditions); HRR up to 8 MW over 2 hours and special laboratories, e.g. with phase-Doppler-anemometer for droplets. The major tasks of research are all problems of fire fighting, CFD modeling and measurements (fires), protective equipment (clothes, etc.) and hazardous materials. Current topics are water mist and foam, real scale tunnel experiments and fires in high rack storage areas.
The Institute of Building Materials, Concrete Construction and Fire Protection (iBMB), Brunswick is affiliated to the Technical University “Carolo Wilhelmina; founded in the 1920’s for testing of concrete and building materials, in the 1960’s completed by one chair in fire protection. Fire safety is a main topic in the architectural and the civil engineering degree. Since the begin of 2013 the new head of the division Fire Safety is Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zehfuss who is also member of the board of directors of the German Fire Protection Association (GFPA). The institute iBMB has comprehensive facilities for tests in structural fire protection (numerous burners and testing set-ups in 4 fire halls) and close cooperation with MPA (material testing station) Brunswick. The major tasks are behavior of structural systems, engineering methods / simulations of fires, reaction-to-fire and innovative concepts in buildings. Current topics are concrete tunnel shells under realistic loading and Room corner tests.
The Research Center for Fire Protection Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) was founded in 1950. The Center conducts research related to problems brought forward by the Fire Service in the fields of both preventative fire safety and fire fighting. In addition, the Center contributes to the development of international and national standards in FSE and to testing of building products and of fire fighting equipment, respectively. Development and evaluation of fire safety concepts for special occupancy buildings are examples of the services provided. The Research Center operates a large scale testing facility (30 m long by 15 m wide by 12 m high) containing a 10 m high wooden staircase, a 25 m² burn room, and several fire compartments for roof tests are available in different scales. The Center’s current staff comprises about a dozen full-time employees. The Center and KIT were the local hosts of the 9th IAFSS symposium in September 2008. The libraries of both the Research Center and of the IdF are the only two big public fire safety related libraries in Germany. 160 abstracts per months are offered online by
FEATURED ARTICLE
Fire Safety Engineering Education in Germany by Anja Hofmann, BAM, Berlin, Germany
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 27
combined efforts of the two libraries. Research reports and other material are made available via the website : www.ffb.kit.edu
The BAM Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing in Berlin is a senior scientific and technical Federal Institute with responsibility to the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. BAM has about 1700 employees. Our mission is Safety in technology and chemistry. Because Fire Safety is part of the work in the departments Chemical Safety Engineering, Containment Systems for Dangerous Goods and Safety of Structures the major task for the next five years is to establish a new key aspect Fire Science in BAM to relate the activities. Fire Science will provide an internal network, new test facilities and temporal research positions with significant financial turnover of about €4.5 million over the next five years. In the division Safety of Structures the working areas related to fire safety are: Fire Retardancy of Polymers, Enclosure Fires and Reaction-to-fire tests, Structures in Fire, Industrial Fires and Chemical Analysis of Fire Products. Major tasks of the research are experimental and numerical investigations (FDS, CFX, Fluent, Abaqus) of structures in fires as well as fire scenarios. BAM has a PhD program in cooperation with German and European Universities with about 100 PhD students at the moment, 8 to 10 Phds are related to FSE and another 10-15 to other fire-related topics. BAM also performs standard tests and supports the national, European and international standardization work. BAM has big test facilities on the BAM main site, e.g. fire resistance test and reaction-to-fire tests for the building sector (national and European standards) and a huge test site called TTS outside of Berlin for large scale experiments with an area of 12 km². TTS has different areas for large scale tests with explosives, containment systems and for fire tests. The fire lab on the BAM main site has a new tunnel furnace.
The German Fire Protection Association (GFPA) is one of the major associations in Germany in the field of Fire Safety and Fire Protection. Its membership includes fire service personnel, researchers, engineers and also insurers. Currently GFPA has about 2,000 individual members and 450 corporative members (e.g., city councils, research institutes and fire-brigade organizations). Its major tasks are solutions of safety problems, support of different research projects and publication of guidelines and recommendations.
The author sees two main current challenges in FSE. The first one is the reliability of numerical calculations in FSE. Especially authorities, who are responsible to approve fire safety concepts, can have difficulties to assess the quality of numerical calculations. Up to now no national or international guideline or control instrument for the quality of numerical calculations has been established. Another problem the author sees is the focus of most students of only numerical solutions to fire safety problems. Neither the knowledge of fire tests, which are used to provide input data for numerical calculations, nor the numerical and physical background of the numerical codes is often profound. The second challenge is that faced in Germany, and generally in Europe and many other places of the world, where energy conservation has become the main focus of construction in the last years. How new materials or different use of existing materials often challenge the fire safety, e.g. high amounts of insulation materials. It is expected that this challenge will persist in the near future.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 28
The construction industry in Hong Kong (now the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region HKSAR) is growing rapidly. There are many new architectural features such as atria, super-highrise buildings, green or sustainable buildings, and large building complexes with high occupant loadings [1]. Many such projects failed to comply with the prescriptive fire safety codes on passive building constructions (PBC) and active fire protection systems or called fire service installations (FSI) in Hong Kong. Implementation of fire safety engineering approaches [2] on PBC since 1998 has made the “fire engineering” profession much more science-oriented, although fire engineering is not a new profession.
Higher education in fire and safety engineering in Hong Kong is in great demand. In order to enhance the knowledge of the people working in this profession, well-structured degree programmes in Building Services Engineering (with fire engineering being an important element) [3, 4] are offered by the Department of Building Services Engineering (BSE) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). Research support is through the Research Centre for Fire Engineering at BSE.
Fire Safety Concerns
New architectural features of the new developments [5] in Hong Kong are focused on the reduction of energy consumption, introduction of natural resources and also integration of both natural and artificial environment. Some examples are internal building void, double glazed wall, glass curtain wall, natural ventilation design and the use of materials with good thermal insulation.
Other problems are: crowded shopping malls, crowded subway stations without sprinkler, designs for crowded areas with low design fires, open kitchens in tall buildings [5], glass façade buildings with post-flashover concerns.
All the above concerns highlighted the necessity of providing higher education and associated systematic research in fire engineering for South East Asia. Engineers with adequate training would not make assumptions without physical justification.
Professional Recognition
Traditionally, fire engineering is not so a “high-level” profession. Local engineering professionals follow the UK practice of having
FEATURED ARTICLE
Education in Fire Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University by W.K. Chow and N.K. Fong, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 29
Chartered Engineers (CEng) under the Engineering Council (EC) and now, the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE). Previously, fire engineers were not grouped under the UK-EC and could only use the title of CEng if they were also corporate members of those engineering institutions recognized by the EC.
However, the situation changed after a fire discipline was established in the HKIE in November 2005. Fire engineers can now be a Member of HKIE under the fire engineering discipline (FRE). They enjoy equivalent professional status as other traditional disciplines, such as building services engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering and structural engineering. The six key areas in the FRE of HKIE are: Fire science, Human psychology & physiology, Active fire protection systems analysis, Passive fire protection systems analysis, Law, regulations and standards, Fire risk management.
There are many different views on grouping areas in the FRE as in above. A possible reason is because the FRE was established within a very short time. Most of the information followed the traditional fire engineering professionals without going through a long-term systematic survey. It was proposed by the author many times on upgrading the above to better serve the industry. Consequently, there is no first degree programme offered by any of the local universities yet.
Teaching Programmes
Fire engineering is a key component in the first degree programme in Building Services Engineering. The BEng in BSE programme was offered in 1985, with full accreditation by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineering (CIBSE) and HKIE.
Fire Engineering subjects desired for appropriate training are: Fire Dynamics, Computational Fire Modelling for Building Design, Fire Engineering System, Legislation Aspects of Fire Safety Management, Design Considerations for Fire Safety Management, Safety Engineering subjects desired for appropriate training are: Safety Aspects in Construction, Occupational Health and Ergonomics, Accident Prevention, Hazard Assessment and Control, Safety Management System and Safety Auditing.
In addition to research degree programmes in Fire Engineering leading to a PhD (conferred by PolyU since 1991) and MPhil (conferred by PolyU in 1989), there is a Master of Science degree programme in Fire and Safety Engineering at BSE-PolyU.
A total of 444 students were admitted since 2001 and 220 graduates up to 2009 for the Master of Science degree programme in Fire and Safety Engineering. Data for the latest years are still under compilation as in the figure. In addition, teaching programmes with fire subjects are: Master of Engineering in Building Services Engineering; Master of Science in Building Services Engineering; Master of Science in Facility Management; Master of Science in High Performance Buildings
Conclusion
It is necessary to offer higher education in Fire Engineering. Taking the education programmes running in Hong Kong as an example, fire engineering must integrate basic relevant fire science with real-life practices. In addition, institutions offering the programme must have strong research support on topics relevant in South East Asia. ‘Quality Teaching’ must be provided to teach relevant topics in fire engineering. However, research assessment exercise in universities has brought additional problems in the past decade. Fire research is not supported in many universities because Fire Science and Engineering is a very small subject discipline. The number of journal papers published, and hence the number of citations, are much lower than other subjects. This is a big threat to local universities developing Fire Engineering programmes. In addition, fire research in overseas cannot be applied directly to solve the local problems on dense urban environment with high occupant loadings. Projects on supertall buildings, long tunnels, deep subway stations, large atria and central business districts have unknown fire scenarios.
REFERENCES
1. W.K. Chow, “The need for fire engineering education in Hong Kong”, Fire Science and Technology, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Special Issue), p. 197-212 (2012).
2. PNAP 204 Guide to Fire Engineering Approach, Practice Note for Authorized Persons and Registered Structural Engineers, Buildings Department, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, March (1998).
3. W.K. Chow, L.T. Wong, K.T. Chan, N.K. Fong and P.L. Ho “Fire safety engineering: comparison of a new degree programme with the model curriculum” Fire Safety Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 1-15 (1999).
4. W.K. Chow, W.Y. Hung, C.W. Leung, C.H. Lui and N.K. Fong “The necessity of offering higher education in Fire and Safety Engineering in Hong Kong” Fire Safety Science, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 186-195 (2004).
5. W.K. Chow, “Performance-based design on fire safety provisions in the Far East”, 2011 SFPE Annual Meeting: Professional Development Conference and Exposition, Engineering Technology Conference, 24-25 October 2011, Portland, Oregon, USA (2011).
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 30
In this paper some opinions are formulated on education in fire safety engineering. From these opinions it is explained how the International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering (http://www.imfse.ugent.be), which currently graduates about 20 per year and is jointly organized by Ghent University (Belgium), Lund University (Sweden) and The University of Edinburgh (UK), has been constructed as practical implementation of an educational program for Fire Safety Engineering.
A basic premise is that, in our ever changing world and community, and particularly in modern and typically complex architecture, where the borders of possibilities are explored, a performance-based approach is required to tackle fire safety issues. Indeed, relying upon prescriptive methods, developed in the framework of existing buildings as ensembles of compartments, is often not sufficient to guarantee fire safety. In the ‘best case’ scenario, prescriptive solutions are conservative, but in a worst case scenario not even that is guaranteed. The step towards this performance-based approach, however, cannot be completed without education for all stakeholders involved, including designers, AHJs, fire services, insurance companies, etc.
A solid basis for the development of fire safety system indeed inevitably resides upon application of engineering principles. When taught on MSc level, engineering insight allows not only understanding existing systems, but also developing novel methods to deal with novel situations (read: modern architecture, the use of modern materials, modern technology, etc.).
Education at MSc level
For obvious reasons, fire safety designs must be elaborated today. As such, one could expect that we all ‘learn by doing’. However, contrary to most other engineering disciplines, the proof of the fire safety pudding cannot rely upon the eating. Indeed, the effectiveness of many fire safety designs is never truly tested, due to the mere fact that no fire occurs during the lifetime of the application. This is a handicap from an engineering point of view. Moreover, with this issue in mind, and again contrary to most other engineering disciplines, it is tempting to look for the ‘cheapest solution possible’. In other words, investments costs during the development and the implementation of the fire safety concept are kept as low as possible, since often no direct ‘return on investment’ is taken into consideration. This might lead to under-investment and misleading ‘engineering experience’ for future designs.
Clearly, PhD type research on fire safety engineering in all its aspects will help develop fundamental insights, useful for application in practice. There is obvious virtue in the further development of specialist
FEATURED ARTICLE
International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE): An International Effort Coordinated by Ghent University
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 31
sub-domains, but probably the largest steps forward can be taken at the moment by combining existing knowledge from those sub-domains. Yet, research progress is by definition slow, if only for the careful validation that is required before the next step forward can be taken. Therefore, there is a strong need for education to serve the need for knowledge today.
Indeed, education is extremely valuable in the middle long and short term. It is important to educate all stakeholders mentioned above. Indeed, having more people with high-level knowledge will speed up the process of generating new knowledge from interactive discussion. Also, and perhaps even more importantly, it will force all parties to adopt a correct attitude. Indeed, the ‘cheapest solution’ will no longer be acceptable if it does not lead to a true fire safe design, but at the same time there is no need for unnecessary distrust when evaluating a fire safety design. This can only be achieved when a sufficient number of stakeholders understand the underlying engineering principles, serving as basis for the fire safety design. This motivates the installment of educational programs at MSc level.
The MSc level is essential: education must not be restricted to the understanding and application of existing techniques, it must also enable graduates to appreciate possibilities and limitations of certain fire safety design approaches from fundamental knowledge and insight.
International effort
Fire as a phenomenon is by nature not bound by country borders. Indeed, from a scientific point of view, it is determined by physical and chemical phenomena and laws. Yet, regional and cultural habits exert a strong influence on the fire safety approach. On the one hand, they strongly affect the architecture and materials used. On the other hand, also ‘imposed’ fire safety measures can seem to be ‘nation bound’.
The ‘international effort’ therefore exceeds the mere teaching of knowledge. It is considered important added value that institutes from different countries teach from their core expertise within a consistent educational program, bringing students into contact with different local cultures with respect to fire safety engineering. On top of that, the internationality also concerns bringing together people from all over the world, with different background cultures, as students into the educational program. As such, a strong cross-fertilization grows among the students and their attitude becomes less ‘bound’ to national/regional habits. Indeed, not only the knowledge, but also, and even more so, the fire safety engineering attitude should be a crucial learning outcome of any educational program in FSE.
Erasmus Mundus framework
The Universities of Ghent (Belgium), Edinburgh (UK) and Lund (Sweden) combine their expertise in forming fire safety engineers during a 2-year top-notch educational program. The European Commission supports this program financially within the extremely competitive Erasmus Mundus framework. Practical information is found on http://www.imfse.ugent.be. The ideas described above are implemented for the graduated fire safety engineers to become leading FSE experts in the near and further future. The group dynamics, stimulated during the program and illustrated in the pictures below, is maintained as professional international network in their future careers. It is the sincere hope of the organizers of the IMFSE program that this all contributes to improved fire safety designs all over the world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The author would like to thank explicitly Prof. Patrick van Hees (Lund University) and Prof. Jose Torero (University of Queensland) for their valuable comments to this paper.
NOTE: At Ghent University, there is also the educational program ‘Postgraduate Studies in Fire Safety Engineering’ (60 ECTS credits), focusing on people who are already professionally active in the field of fire safety. Approx. 5 students graduate per year from this program.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 32
In the Department of Justice college at EKU there are four bachelor’s degrees that require the study of fire science; Fire Protection & Safety Engineering Technology, Fire, Arson & Explosion Investigation, Fire Protection and Administration, and Occupational Safety. These majors currently enroll around 700 students. Two classes specifically focused on fire science are offered, FSE 120 Fire Behavior and Combustion and FSE 355 Fire Dynamics. In these courses there is a broad spectrum of students, ranging from applied fire fighters to more theoretically based students interested in becoming fire protection engineers. This creates the age old applied vs. fundamental instruction challenge to overcome as an instructor. To be competitive at either extreme, I believe you need to be educated in aspects of both extremes. Fire fighters need to understand some of the underlying math and physics needed in fire dynamics and students on the more theoretical end need to have an appreciation and understanding of firefighting applications. Often courses give either what are known as factual problems or well-stated algorithmic problems [1]. These include an equation and a scenario with one variable missing and ask you to solve for the unknown variable, but this often results in no more than a fancy plug and chug exercise. While these are of benefit to student learning, literature has shown that the use of game-like problems increases student learning and helps them to become critical and creative thinkers.
Game-like problems however are scenarios that have multiple solution methods and are applicable to both the student’s interest and experience. Dole & Sinatra [2] showed that when students are conceptually engaged, they are more interested in the problem and will expend more effort to understand the content than they would in simply memorizing facts. Therefore if instructors can create problems that have a connection to the student’s life they will spend additional time and effort on a problem. For example, students could be asked whether or not the kerosene fire in Figure 1 would cause their bedroom to become ventilation controlled if only the door was open? To solve this problem they need to do a number of steps involving separate equations. Since the equations are all linear and algebraic, the problem is focused on understanding and critical thinking rather than simply solving challenging mathematics.
In solving the above problem, students must first estimate the heat-release rate of the fire. They can either do this by scaling the flame height and diameter using the meter stick in the image and Heskestad’s flame-height equation (making the assumption that the image was taken when the flame was at its 50% height) or they can find the diameter of the fire, look up the asymptotic mass-flux rate and heat of combustion for kerosene, calculate what the mass-flux would be for the diameter of the fire, and then calculate the heat-release rate (HRR) from the mass-flux equation (assuming some efficiency). They can then use the basic equation to find the maximum HRR that the room can support with a single vent and determine which one is bigger.
This solution, while technically simple requires them to have an understanding of the concepts involved and the ability to combine them in a practical manner. It also required them to make a number of assumptions and approximations which I believe is an important skill to learn in school work as the real world is full of uncertainty. By giving students these types of game like ill-defined problems [3] they learn to make reasonable approximations for problem-solving purposes, as real-world problems rarely have all of the inputs precisely available. Students can also get in the habit of checking to make sure that their answer is reasonable since they will be comparing fire sizes to real life scenarios.
This kind of question is more difficult to grade because not only will each student likely have a different compartment but they can use different solution methods to reach their answer. But the solution methodology will likely be similar and the given answers should be within a reasonable range. Plus it is easy to take these kinds of questions and include objective words from Bloom’s taxonomy of learning [4] such as to “analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the situation”, which are typically the types of questions educators should be asking, per a lot of discussions on educational pedagogy.
To make reading assignments included in homework more relevant to the student’s life, instructors can ask students to review the section and write 3 interesting facts that they found in the reading. This attempts to make the reading a personal question rather which is more interesting and authentic reaching
FEATURED ARTICLE
Fire Science Homework Problems that Facilitate Learning at Eastern Kentucky University
by Scott Rockwell, Eastern Kentucky University
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 33
back to the goal of meaningful learning. A similar methodology can be used with definitions, asking students to go through the book and write 5 definitions of terms they did not know and find interesting. Writing basic definitions seems like the optimum example of busy work, especially in today’s digital age where copy/past makes this a trivial task. But the goal of making sure students understand the terms used in the class is important. To help confirm understanding of basic definitions, instructors can write the name of variables and units in word form during student’s homework and exams. If they are asked to use a “heat release rate of two thousand kilowatts” instead of “ =2000 kW”, students must know what both the heat-release rate and kilowatt are and cannot simply plug in the number into an equation. This is also similar to how the students will likely hear the subject discussed by fire science professionals during a verbal conversation.
The types of ill stated problems which are suggested here should likely not be sprung on students in the middle of a semester. Some students are not used to having to make assumptions and searching for input parameters not directly provided in the book so it is important to start them off small and gradually build up the difficulty of problems. The benefit of this is that the fundamental skills like unit conversion, geometric calculations, and other sub steps can be required for each ill stated problem thus providing the repetition of fundamental concepts without the impression of busy work. To try and keep problems relevant to students I ask them to create potential homework problems and solutions through the course and write any topics that they know of and think are relevant which were not covered in class. This also provides at least some feedback if it is difficult to get students to discuss topics during class.
REFERENCES
1. Jonassen, D.H., Toward a design theory of problem solving. Education Technology: Research & Development, 2000. 48(4): p. 63-85.
2. Dole, J.A. and G.M. Sinatra, Reconceptualizing change in the cognitive construction of knowledge. Educational Psychologist, 1998.33(213): p. 109-128.
3. Jonassen, D.H., Instructional design model for well-structured and ill structured problem-solving learning outcomes. Educational Technology: Research and Development, 1997. 45(1): p. 65-95.
4. Anderson, L.W. and D.R. Krathwohl, A taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing: A revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of educational objectives. 2001.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 34
In this article a brief background of the Bachelor’s program in Fire Protection Engineering at Lund University, is given with a special focus on what role FPEs have in Sweden. Then, with reference to these roles, some critical educational challenges are discussed.
The program was established some 27 years ago (1986). Up until then the subject of Fire Protection Engineering was not university education in Sweden. More information about the exact content of the program is available at www.brand.lth.se. A reason for making FPE a higher-level education was the increased recognition of the limitations of prescription-based fire safety design and therefore increased need for performance-based design. Another reason was societal changes such as increased use of advanced technology, increased risk potential and vulnerability and increased societal complexity. Interestingly, these reasons are still highly relevant today. Hence, it was realized that both deeper and broader knowledge about fire protection engineering principles and tools was needed. At that time the program was 2.5 years long and 25 students were admitted annually. Since then the program has grown in size; now 50 students are admitted – recognizing the increasing role of FPEs both nationally and internationally. It has also grown in length; in 1994 the program became 3.5 years long – as a consequence of realizing 2.5 years are not enough to ensure that the FPEs have the necessary knowledge, abilities and skills to fulfill their roles.
A large part of the fire research group from Lund at Interflam, June 2013.
In ISO 13043 Fire Safety Engineering is defined as: “application of engineering methods based on scientific principles to the development or assessment of designs in the built environment through the analysis of specific fire scenarios or through the quantification of risk for a group of fire scenarios” (ISO 13943)
Following this definition FPEs need to have knowledge about fires as physical phenomena (how material ignites and burn), about fire development and spread, about fire risk reducing measures (e.g. fire detection and suppression systems). Furthermore, since the majority of fire safety applications focus on human safety, e.g. how the built environment should be designed in order to provide acceptable safety for the people, knowledge about human behavior in fires and how fires affect human health is also needed. In addition, in order to perform systematic assessments of fire safety designs, including evaluating alternative design solutions, determining what is safe enough, etc., knowledge about risk assessment and
FEATURED ARTICLE
Bachelor program in Fire Protection Engineering at Lund University: Role of fire protection engineers and educational challenges
by Henrik Hassel and Patrick Van Hees, Lund University, Sweden
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 35
risk-related decision making is required. Of course, in order to be able to acquire this knowledge, students need broad knowledge about natural science (chemistry, physics, thermodynamics and mechanics), mathematics and statistics.
The Bachelor program in Fire Protection Engineering at Lund University has as its primary aim to provide students with the above mentioned knowledge in order to enable the application and critical evaluation of performance-based fire safety designs. It is also in this context the majority of FPEs with degrees from Lund University works (as fire safety consultants, as counterparts at the fire and rescue services, or as underwriters at insurance companies/brokers). However, in Sweden FPEs with degrees from Lund University have a much broader role than the definition of fire protection engineering given above might give an impression of.
FPEs in Sweden, with an additional year of theoretical and practical studies at the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency’s school, are also highly involved in the operational activities of the fire and rescue services where they have the role as high-level incident commanders. Other areas where FPEs in Sweden are involved are land-use planning (e.g. municipalities, county administration boards, risk management consultants), crisis and disaster management (e.g. municipalities, county councils, industries, and international disaster response), general safety and risk management (e.g. coordinator of safety activities in both public and private organizations).
This extended role of the FPEs naturally also must be reflected in the education but from the program management point of view it is a major challenge to enable the students to equip themselves with the knowledge and skills necessary to fulfill this role. In Lund we to some extent addressed this by in 2001 establishing the 2-year Master’s program in Risk Management and Safety Engineering which makes it possible for the FPE students (about 2/3 of the FPE students in Lund continues to this Master’s program) to broaden their knowledge to more general risk management-related subjects as well as deepening their knowledge within the area of fire protection engineering since the Master’s program has a large part elective courses.
However, more importantly, given it is impossible to fully and in detail cover all aspects of the roles FPEs have in Sweden, we need to think about the common features of all possible futures that a FPE can get it is clear that it is not only about learning the “facts” of fire protection engineering. Instead, it is more about generic abilities such as learning how to learn, since ability to learn is probably the most important factor to a successful future work career. It is also about learning analytical and critical thinking as well as about ability to systematically analyze risk scenarios, be it fire risk, chemical hazard or pandemic scenarios. It is the program management’s belief that there is the need of an increase focus in the educational debates on these latter generic abilities. How can we construct courses that both provide the students with the relevant and most up-to-date knowledge about science and technology in the field of fire protection engineering while at the same time make them develop the generic abilities just mentioned?
NOTE: At Lund University, there is also the educational program ‘International Master of Science in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE)’. Information about that program is found earlier in this newsletter.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 36
The Department of Fire Protection Engineering (FPE) at the University of Maryland, College Park, offers the Bachelor of Science (B.S), Master of Science (M.S.), and Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) degrees. It also offers Ph.D. degrees in conjunction with other departments in the College of Engineering. The Department was founded in 1956, and since then has conferred over 1,000 B.S. degrees and over 300 graduate degrees. The Department has 6 full-time faculty and 21 part-time adjunct instructors.
The Department has the only ABET-accredited undergraduate program in FPE in the world. Students in this B.S. program learn engineering fundamentals, design, investigation, and research techniques. The program focuses on how to assess the challenges posed by fire and how to formulate solutions that are both effective and economical. The program encourages students to become innovators and to work on engineering breakthroughs in fire dynamics, materials testing, computer modeling and simulation, building system design, and all other aspects of FPE.
The B.S. program provides courses in a broad range of topics in fire protection engineering, including thermal sciences, fire dynamics, computer modeling, life safety analysis, structural response, experimental methods, and the design of a wide array of detection, suppression, and smoke control systems. A capstone design course is included, for which students apply concepts addressed from most of the undergraduate FPE courses. Graduates of the B.S. program are employed in consulting engineering companies, industry, insurance companies, federal, state or local government, and in the fire service.
One challenge related to the undergraduate program has been to more broadly educate students on the diverse topics and problems fire protection engineers should address. A popular technical elective, Industrial Fire Safety, was recently introduced. According to Dr. Arnaud Trouvé, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, “this course is designed to expand the horizon of FPE students beyond the traditional boundaries of fire protection engineering and towards chemical process safety problems. The course specifically looks at consequence analysis from the discharge of toxic or flammable materials, dispersion and formation of toxic or flammable clouds, and fire and explosion scenarios. By exposing the students to a wider range of safety problems, this course responds to a need in the chemical process industry and prepares students for a wider range of professional tasks and opportunities.”
Photo credit: Mr. Alan Santos
The UMD FPE graduate program is one of three such programs in the U.S. and has over 90 master’s students. There are also 17 doctoral students advised by FPE faculty. The Department offers a flexible
FEATURED ARTICLE
FPE Degree Programs at the University of Maryland by Nicole Hollywood, James Milke, and Peter B. Sunderland, University of Maryland, USA
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 37
program of study within the M.S. (thesis) and M.Eng. (non-thesis) options. While the M.S. program is limited to on-campus students, the M.Eng. program is available to both on-campus and distance students. In both programs, students work with the help of an advisor to formulate a course of study based on a particular set of interests. Many students select a set of courses concerned with the science of fire. A second set of courses selected by some students leads to a concentration in simulation and risk analysis.
FPE graduate courses emphasize recent advances, including material testing practices, computer simulations, performance of fire protection systems, risk analysis, smoke movement, and fire dynamics. There are similarities among many courses offered via the on-campus and distance modes. Some courses are only offered on campus, including a hands-on experimental methods course and courses on fundamental principles of fire dynamics and smoke movement. Conversely, the distance courses tend to be more applications oriented, and include a course in performance-based design and risk analysis.
Fifth year student Mollie Semmes, who will complete the combined B.S./M.S. program, says, “The Department offers a B.S./M.S. program that allows you to take Masters level courses as an undergraduate student, which helps you to save time toward an advanced degree.”
For many years, a challenge facing the department has been sufficient recruitment of undergraduate students. Students interested in engineering majors are unaware of the field of fire protection engineering. Thus, the department’s recruiting activities have focused on informing engineering students of the fire protection engineering field. Currently, there are about 110 students in the B.S. program, and about 35 earn the B.S. degree annually. However, the demand for FPE graduates by employers far exceeds the supply. To more aggressively recruit students, the department recently hired a full-time Academic Coordinator who will be able to focus on consistent and frequent outreach while expanding and building department relationships with nearby institutions and constituents.
Another challenge has been to balance the focus of a Research I engineering university, which is to teach the fundamental aspects of engineering and perform scholarly research, with the desires of many prospective employers who would like to hire students who are well versed in the practical aspects of fire protection engineering such as design principles, applications, and codes and standards. The requirements of tenured faculty to excel at fundamental research allow little time for them to obtain sufficient experience to teach advanced practical courses in FPE. Adjunct instructors have filled this gap, though they are present in the department only on a part-time basis. In response to this challenge, a campaign to hire a professor of practice has been initiated to bolster the department’s curriculum in FPE applications and in applied research.
A fourth challenge has been to broaden research support, thereby expanding the graduate program to include a Ph.D. program. Because all other engineering departments at UMD have Ph,D. programs, this final step in the department’s evolution is important. However, the modest size of the department faculty makes it difficult to pursue the appreciable increases in the number of graduate classes offered by the department and in research support required to justify a Ph.D. program.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 38
Despite the current downturn in the global economy, the demand for fire protection engineers (FPE) continues to outpace the number of people qualified to fill the positions. The Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) regularly surveys some of the largest employers of FPEs to learn more about their recruiting efforts. It is not uncommon for these employers to say it is difficult to find qualified engineers. At the same time, the colleges and universities with FPE programs indicate that graduates rarely have trouble finding employment.
This gap between supply and demand may be one of the most significant issues facing our profession today. Currently, the BS degree is typically the minimum requirement for a practicing fire protection engineer. However, globally there are not enough schools and students to keep up with this demand.
At the same time, the number of practicing FPEs with MS degrees is increasing. This increase is partly due to the popularity of online distance programs that offer MS degree programs in FPE. Because engineers with degrees in disciplines other than FPE have found these MS online programs as a credible way to enter the FPE profession, these online programs have been helpful in closing the demand gap. Moreover, although there are currently more opportunities for FPEs to obtain PhD degrees, there is also a demand in the academic community for FPEs who hold a Ph.D. This gap in demand is making it difficult for FPE programs to find FPEs for professor positions.
Although the demand for FPEs is great for the individual engineer, it is not great for the profession itself. That is why SFPE has focused a lot of its resources towards promoting higher education programs for FPEs. Specifically, SFPE has a three pronged strategy that focuses on a) promoting the profession through a public awareness campaign, b) assisting with the establishing new higher educational programs and c) evaluating of FPE programs through accreditation.
Public Awareness
Over the last 10 years SFPE has worked with a public relations (PR) firm to develop and implement a PR strategy that promotes FPE as a career. The program focuses on getting messages out to students, parents and guidance counselors about why FPE is an exciting and rewarding career. These messages include discussions about a) the global fire problem, b) how FPEs can make a difference by protecting people from fire, c) how FPE’s work on a diverse range of interesting projects, and d) the demand for FPEs.
These messages are used in all materials SFPE uses to promote the profession that include and not limited to:
• Careers in FPE Career Guide. This career guide is available online and in hard copy. It provides profiles of three FPE’s who recently graduated, salary information and the different pathways that one may take to become an FPE
• Careers in FPE Website (http://careers.sfpe.org). This website has a) a listing of the colleges and universities that offer FPE programs, b) a listing of scholarships that are available to FPE students, c) information on why FPE is an exciting and rewarding profession and d) information on how students can get involved through SFPE membership and SFPE student chapters.
FEATURED ARTICLE
Society of Fire Protection Engineers’ Role in Promoting Higher Education for Fire Safety Engineers
by Chris Jelenewicz, Society of Fire Protection Engineers, USA
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 39
• Careers in FPE Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/careers.sfpe.org). This Facebook Page has over 1,800 global friends who are perspective students, current students, faculty and practicing engineers. It has become a great tool to get career messages out to a diverse population across the globe. Several posts on this page have been read by over 2,500 people.
• Chemistry of Fire Program (http://sfpe.discoveryeducation.com). The Chemistry of Fire is a multi-media teacher’s kit that is geared to high school chemistry students. It teaches students the science behind fire as a way for students to fully understand the dangers of fire. As a result, it will increase the awareness of fire and the profession of fire protection engineering.
• News Releases Issued by SFPE. The Society frequently issues news releases that focus on FPE as a career. SFPE can target these releases to career editors. These news releases have been used in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and many career trade publications.
These promotional materials are distributed to students throughout the globe who are interested in becoming FPEs. They are also used by SFPE Chapters who are interested in exhibiting at career fairs.
Promoting Higher Education
In 2007, SFPE established a Higher Education Committee. The scope of the SFPE Higher Education Committee is to facilitate the development of new degree programs and courses, and the utilization of new and existing programs and courses at the university level in fire protection engineering.
Since its inception, the SFPE Higher Education Committee has assisted numerous colleges and universities who are or where interested in starting FPE programs. This assistance included providing access to a) SFPE members for market surveys, b) FPE professors for curriculum development, c) fire protection corporations for financial support and d) SFPE career promotional materials.
Additionally, in 2010 the SFPE Higher Education Committee published Recommendations for a Model Curriculum for a BS Degree in FPE. The Task Group that developed this document had a great mix of professional diversity; both educators and practitioners were represented. The document was not intended to imply that this is the only acceptable combination of courses that should be offered for such a program but as a guidance document for a college that is interested in starting a FPE BS program. The Committee also has a Task Group that is currently working on a Model Curriculum for an MS Degree in FPE. It is hoped that this document will be published before the end of 2013.
Accreditation
In 2009, SFPE became a member of ABET. This development was a vital step in SFPE’s commitment to making certain that FPE higher educational programs meet the educational standards set by the profession. ABET is the accreditation organization dedicated to assuring quality in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology education.
As a member of ABET, SFPE now takes the lead responsibility for the accreditation of FPE higher education programs. As part of this responsibility, SFPE establishes the educational program criteria for FPE programs. This program criterion differentiates FPE programs from the other engineering disciplines. Additionally, SFPE members who are trained by ABET as program evaluators are now the evaluators for FPE programs.
Currently, two fire protection programs are evaluated by ABET– the University of Maryland Fire Protection Engineering and the Oklahoma State University Fire Protection and Safety Engineering Technology programs. Although ABET accreditation is the standard that is used in the United States, ABET is growing into a global organization. As such, FPE programs throughout the globe can attain ABET accreditation, based on criteria developed by SFPE.
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 40
The Spanish for Fire Safety Engineering is Ingenieria de Seguridad Contra Incendios (ISCI). The new ISCI Group, established in 2012 and coordinated by the Association of Professional Fire Engineers (APICI), with the support of the Public Administration, has a main objective of analyzing the current status of Fire Safety Engineering in Spain. This group, along with the collaboration of many companies and institutions, is actually proposing new ideas for the development of this field based on qualified engineers. Two important examples of education programs in Fire Safety in Spain are the GIDAI Group, Santander, and the Universidad Pontificia de Comillas, Madrid.
GIDAI
For several years, the GIDAI Group has had a line of academic training in Fire Safety within the doctoral program in Industrial Engineering from Universidad de Cantabria. During the last five years, GIDAI has granted seven doctoral degrees and has supervised about 15 additional doctoral students, with diverse subjects in the fire safety field, such as fire safety in transportation, fire and evacuation computer modeling, smoke movement, the analysis of solid phase degradation, decision support systems, etc.
During the first stage within the doctoral program, students learn the theoretical fundamentals of different phenomena related to fire safety science. Students cover the theoretical bases of fire dynamics, fire behavior of materials (calculating, in practical cases, their properties using analytical methods, STA and cone calorimeter tests), zone models (conducting practical case studies and studying the model CFAST) and field models (using FDS as an application case). Additionally, the general concepts of active and passive fire protection are instilled.
Once they overcome this first phase, the students focus on a specific area within the broad field of fire safety and focus all their doctoral development on that particular topic, thus they become an international expert on that subject. With the aim of completing and optimizing their training, doctoral students participate in the quasi-annual international conference organized by our group GIDAI, as well as other events where they present developments in their work. Finally, and with the advice of the research team of GIDAI, they have the opportunity to publish papers in international research journals.
Additionally, GIDAI offers Masters degrees on Experimental and Mathematical Methods for the Analysis of Combustion and Fire Dynamics, where we introduce students to the fundamentals of combustion and fire
FEATURED ARTICLE
Fire Safety Engineering Programs in Santander and Madrid by Mariano Mariano Lázaro1 and Alexis Cantizano2
1Universidad de Cantabria, Spain 2Universidad Pontifica de Comillas, Spain
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 41
dynamics, as well as different experimental methods that allow the characterization of material fire behavior and fire computer models, with an average of 5 students per year in recent years. Finally, GIDAI also has two undergraduate courses on the subjects of fire computer modeling and fire safety, with a total of about 70 students each year.
ICAI
In Madrid, Universidad Pontificia de Comillas and the Association of Professional Fire Engineers (APICI) have been offering the 4th edition of the Master program in Fire Protection Engineering (MIPCI). The program consists of 60 ECTS-credits, where 30 ECTS-credits are accumulated attending classes from September to May. The rest of the credits are covered with complementary activities like autonomous work, essays and scheduled site visits. This past year, our students have been able to receive real fire fighting training, which has become a very useful experience in their formation. Also, the students are invited to some special events related to the Fire Protection field like the VII International Congress of Fire Safety Engineering organized by APICI, Fundación Mapfre, ALAMYS and AFITI and held in Madrid in February.
The contents of this postgraduate program start with a deep review of heat transfer and fluid mechanics in order to understand the main fundamentals of fire. Then the primary active, passive and water-based fire protection systems are introduced and described by theoretical and practical lessons, using different software like HASS. Performance-based design is exhaustively explained, in comparison with prescriptive design, and analyzed within the presentation of real projects. These topics are also described and applied in regard to three different sectors, building, industry and transportation systems, with an emphasis on stations and tunnels. Also, its legal aspects are included, like fireman services, fire investigation and insurance. Moreover, the main techniques in fire simulation and evacuation are studied and practiced, with the use of well-known software like FDS and Legion.
From February to July, the students have to develop a master thesis. Every student chooses their own supervisor, who guides them during this period and guarantees the professionalism and the quality of the thesis before their public presentation. One of our major concerns is the teaching quality. Forty lecturers participate in this program, coming from other universities, research institutes, industry and the public administration. The group of students is always reduced, with a maximum of thirty.
In support of this academic program, in the Institute for Research in Technology (IIT) that belongs to Universidad Pontificia de Comillas, one PhD student is working on smoke movement in large volume spaces. Full-scale fire tests have been carried out and numerical models are being developed. Additionally, some new research topics are beginning with undergraduate students. They are working on the use of scaling laws and also on multi-objective optimization of structures in fire.
One of our main challenges is to offer a deep knowledge in this field so that our students become professionals in a sector which is not well recognized within our country yet. Thanks to the Alumni Association of MIPCI, these professionals are becoming a well-known group to prove the qualification received and encourage their recognition by the industry and the public administration.
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Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 43
Battery safety is one of the most important concerns for the deployment of electric vehicles (EVs/HEVs/PHEVs) and utility/grid storage systems. In the meantime, intensive related business competition among EV promoters results in eager strategies aiming at sharp cost reduction and performance improvement. As a result of recurrent incidents along battery life cycle – manufacturing, transport, storage, and recycling – the awareness of all stakeholders that safety concerns have to be challenged has increased over the past few years. Battery manufacturers are now able to produce high quality lithium-ion cells, with roughly one reported failure of every 4 to 5 million small battery cells produced.
F Fire damaged li-ion battery pack involved in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner
incident of early 2013 (courtesy NTSB).
As part of inventoried incidents, we can mention the waves of recalls of Li-ion battery powered consumer products due to fire events in 2006 which were widely reported in the news media. More recently, in Japan, overheat occurred on PHEV Li-ion battery packs, and one pack caught fire during a final inspection in an assembly plant in March 2013.
However, incidents affecting electro-mobility remain rare nowadays. Significant incidents occurred during storage and recycling phases. The fire occurred in 2008 in a manufacturing plant in Connecticut, USA involved the release of heavy smoke containing hydrogen fluoride (HF) which conducted authorities to require the evacuation of the local residents and three schools. As a result of this incident, the awareness of the possibility of HF emission, research on the fate of the fluorine element was started at INERIS. Fire tests conducted on EV vehicles compared with analogous internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles showed that a significant quantity of HF was measured during both electric and ICE vehicles fire tests [1]. Important learning may also arise from the identification of root causes of incidents that apparently involve rechargeable lithium battery systems in emerging applications. In the field of EVs, crash test operated on a Chevy Volt that led to delayed fire of vehicles in 2011 rose significant emotion. Follow-up investigation revealed insufficient protection of the battery pack environment in case of significant deformation of the area in case of a crash, which has been corrected by the manufacturer.
The analysis of the multiple fires of Karma vehicles that were the consequence of flooding induced by Sandy Hurricane [2] in the port of Narwak on Nov 2012 concluded to a root cause independent of the battery pack themselves, although originating from electric short due to action of salt water. Same conclusion came from an earlier isolated fire involving same Karma luxurious vehicle that led to vehicle recalls for the replacement a defective cooling fan. The recent incidents on Li-ion battery packs pertaining to two brand new Boeing Dreamliners 787 raise questions over emergent safe use of high power lithium-ion battery pack for highly complex and interconnected aeronautic applications (see figure above). The Boeing 787 is the first commercial aircraft to use Li-ion as its main electric energy storage system and to promote new uses of electric energy in aeronautics (e.g. in replacement of hydraulics). Although the exact root cause has not been identified yet, examination of the failed batteries apparently reveals signs of
FEATURED ARTICLE
Battery Safety Challenges in New Technologies by Amandine Lecocq and Guy Marlair
INERIS, France
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 44
internal short-circuit in one of the eight cells leading to a thermal runaway with a fire which propagated to others cells. This incident appears after less than 100,000 flight hours whereas Boeing’s estimate as part of certification was that a smoke event involving the new Li-ion battery should only occur once in 10 million flight hours. A statement that gives some power to the idea that the fault may also arise from the fact that such batteries are deeply integrated to a complex and interactive system during charge and discharge of the battery.
In general, most of the inherent hazards trigger accidental scenarios when batteries are misused or facing abnormal conditions. According to their specific hazard profile, risk management strategies have to be developed from design to end of life in order to accompany their sustainable growth in related applications. From this perspective, INERIS has been carrying out research activities on battery safety characterization and risk assessment for several years. Research and Development activities and experimental testing are combined to evaluate and to manage the risks of batteries for advanced applications. INERIS previous experience and recent significant moves have led to the elaboration of a strategic research roadmap and to the creation of STEEVE safety platform (Electrochemical Energy Storage for Electric Vehicles). This platform dedicated to abuse testing on batteries makes available a wide range of facilities for safety assessment of the batteries and their components for both mobile and stationary applications during all life cycle (from design to end of life). Available facilities enable to perform mechanical abuse tests (static and dynamic crush, drop, nail penetration, etc.), electrical abuse tests (overcharge, overdischarge, short-circuit) and thermal abuse tests (thermal cycling, thermal stability and external fire). The figure to the left shows the impact facility –part of the STEEVE plateform- able to lift a mass of around 300 kg up to 5 m and the Tewarson apparatus enabling to perform tests under controlled atmosphere and to characterize small cell and materials fire behavior. As an example, this fire calorimeter was used in the framework of a regional project named DEGAS to provide
combustion hazard profiles of various electrolytes commonly used in lithium ion technology in terms of effective heats of combustion, mass loss rate, heat release rate and toxicity.
As part of its strategic research roadmap, INERIS is involved in various national and European projects on advanced battery technologies covering all phases of their life cycle for both mobile and utility/grid storage applications. As an example, the European Project named STABALID aims to support the deployment of safe Li-ion stationary batteries with a cell size larger than 10 Ah and systems larger than 1 MWh. This will be done by developing, testing, validating and disseminating a new international standard for stationary battery tests during the course of the project.
No doubt that the provision of data on hazards of battery technologies and the evaluation of implemented safety barriers are key steps for the safe deployment of rechargeable batteries for advanced applications.
REFERENCES
1. Amandine Lecoco, Marie Bertana, Benjamin Truchot, Guy Marlair, Fire tests on vehicles with electric and combustion engines, Fire Safety Science News 32, 2012.
2. Charles R. Jennings, Fires During the 2012 Hurricane Sandy in Queens, New York: A First Report, Fire Safety Science News 34, 2013
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 45
CONFERENCE REPORTS 7th International Seminar on Fire and Explosion Hazards, Providence The 7th International Seminar on Fire and Explosion Hazards, held in Providence, USA in May 2013, was a great success. It was attended by 122 participants, including 35 students and 5 plenary speakers, representing 15 different countries (by affiliation). The technical program included 97 papers, about equally split between fire and explosion topics. They were published in a book of proceedings and DVD, which were handed out to the attendees at registration (copies are available). In addition to the technical sessions, the participants enjoyed the sights and seafood of New England during a half-day excursion to Newport, Rhode Island. The farewell party and closing of the seminar was held at the FM Global Research Campus, where the attendees experienced the fire severity produced by the burning of stacks of plastic pallets.
The seminar enjoyed the financial support of the following sponsors: Fike Corp., International Association of Fire Safety Science (IAFSS), United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), and FM Global. The UTRC funds were allocated to support students presenting papers at the seminar. The recipients, who were selected prior to the seminar on the basis of the reviews of their papers, were: Tajwar Dar, University of Newcastle, Australia; Bala Fakandu, University of Leeds, UK; Song Hou, University of Newcastle, Australia; Philippe Julien, McGill University, Canada; Alexander Klippel, BAM, Germany; Anna Tsoi, St-Petersburg State Polytechnic University, Russia; and Yi Zhang, University of Maryland, USA. Regrettably, due to the delays in obtaining US visas, Tajwar Dar and Anna Tsoi were not able to attend the seminar and, therefore, could not collect the award.
The IAFSS funds were used to reward five best papers. The recipients were selected by a committee chaired by Prof. Derek Bradley on the basis of the quality of the technical work and of the effectiveness of the presentation. They were:
Lorenz Böck, Lehrstuhl für Thermodynamik, Germany André Gaathaug, Telemark University College, Norway Karl Meredith, FM Global, USA Adriana Palacios, University of Leeds, UK Tei Saburi, AIST, Japan.
The recipients of the IAFSS-sponsored best paper awards shown with Prof. Bodzio
Dlugogorski (IAFSS Chair) and Prof. Derek Bradley (Award Committee Chair). [left to right: A. Gaathaug, B. Dlugogorski, K. Meredith, D. Bradley, L. Böck, A. Palacios, and T. Saburi].
Congratulations to all for their contributions to the scientific success of the seminar.
Signed: Jenny Chao and Franco Tamanini, Chairs of ISFEH Local and International Organizing Committees
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Fire Scene Investigation and Evidence Identification Technology, Shenyang The International Conference on Fire Scene Investigation and Evidence Identification Technology was held in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China, on April 18th and 19th, 2013. The conference was co-organized by the Information Technology Bureau and the Fire Protection Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, China and sponsored by Shenyang Fire Protection Research Institute as well as the Key Laboratory on Fire Scene Investigation and Evidence Identification of the Ministry of Public Security.
The conference invited eight renowned experts for the plenary speeches. The invited speakers include Dr. Ronald Hopkins on the behalf of NFPA, Dr. Joseph Cavaleri who is a senior criminal sense analyst in Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department and Mr. Songgang from Japanese Tokyo Auto Company. Dr. Kaiyuan Li was invited as one of the key note speakers to join the conference on the behalf the State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (SKLFS), and gave a lecture on his research of flashover and char patterns. In this lecture, Dr. Li gave a brief introduction to the New Zealand fire investigation policies and
pinpointed the differences between China and New Zealand. He also presented some outcomes of his research on charring behavior and fire patterns formed by flashover. At the end of the lecture, he indicated difficulties and proposed potential research areas on identifying the fire origin with char patterns in flashover circumstances.
This two-day international conference provided an excellent communication platform for delegates. They not only had a deep discussion but also reached an extensive consensus on fire scene investigation, evidence identification, vehicle fire cause analysis, outsize fire investigation, and flammable liquid residues identification. The conference advocated that it is necessary to further strengthen the communication and corporation in fire scene investigation, evidence identification, and system construction.
Signed: NaiAn Liu, State Key Laboratory of Fire Science
4th Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference, Raleigh The US edition of the 4th Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference - co-organized by IAWF, IAFSS, Tomsk State University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute - was held in Raleigh from February 18 to 22, 2013. This conference allowed wildland fire researchers to meet around the main topic: "At the Crossroads, Looking Toward the Future in a Changing Environment". This topic arose from the feeling that the changing environment substantially modifies fire behavior and fire regimes in the forests as well as at the wildland/urban interface.
This edition can be deemed as a success, with around 350 attendees, 7 keynote presentations, 85 oral presentations and over 50 posters representing the last research developments in fire behavior and fuel modeling. In addition to the presentations, over 10 workshops were held on February 18 to discuss specific fire topics or present new applications developed in research and now available to end-users.
In addition to the U.S. edition, the Russian edition will be held in St. Petersburg from July 1 to 4. Visit the conference webpage for a full listing of suggested topics and an explanation of the session formats. The program of the conference will include a first day of workshops and three days of parallel sessions, including a poster session on the third day of the conference. In addition to the technical part, a boat trip along the Neva river, a cultural activity, and a field trip will be proposed.
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A selection if the best papers from Raleigh and St. Petersburg will be published in special issues of the International Journal of Wildland Fire and Fire Safety Journal. IAFSS awards will also be given for the best paper, best applied paper and best student paper in St. Petersburg.
Signed: Albert Simeoni, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (now at University of Edinburgh).
International Workshop on Fire Research, Kanpur A two day ‘International Workshop on Fire Research’ was held at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India, from 31st July-1August 2013. The workshop was organised under the auspices of the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development (NCCRD) at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. NCCRD is committed to research and dissemination of combustion fundamentals leading to improvements in applications of societal impact that include fire safety. The work shop was organised in view of developing interest in fire research both in Indian academia (which includes IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, IIT Roorkee, IIT Bombay and IIT
Gandhinagar) and Indian industry (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Centre for Fire Environment and Explosion Safety). The aim of the workshop was to identify global fire research needs as well as national needs for a synergetic research contribution from the developing fire research community in India. The workshop provided a platform for the Indian researchers to interact amongst themselves and with some of the leading fire researchers of the world. The workshop sessions broadly addressed the four basic areas in fire research, namely material flammability, building and industrial fires, fire detection and fire suppression. The expert talks were delivered by Prof. Jose Torero (Introducing fire safety in built environment), Prof. Jim T’ien (Numerical modelling in fire research), Dr. Prateep Chatterjee (Large scale fires: new technologies in industrial fire protection) and Prof. Ali S Rangwala (Industrial fires and explosions). A need for structured education on fire safety was emphasized.
Signed: Amit Kumar, IIT Madras
CALL FOR PAPERS
Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Conference The Fire Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Conference, SupDet 2014, is scheduled for March 4 -7, 2014 in Orlando, Florida, and will address the latest developments in research, technology, and applications for the fire protection community. This year we are co-locating SupDet with the International Crisis and Risk Communication Conference (ICRC Conference), which is hosted by the Nicholson School of Communication at UCF and being held March 3-5.
Interested presenters are asked to submit a one page abstract by e-mail no later than October 15, 2013 to [email protected]. Submitted abstracts must include the full title, and name(s), affiliation(s), address(es), telephone number(s), and e-mail address(es) of the author(s), with the presenter identified (underlined). Format your abstract for 8 ½" x 11" paper, single-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman (or equivalent) text with 1" text margins, using Microsoft Word 2000 or later.
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Papers are sought on new developments with a focus on the following topics. Case studies are always welcome as well. Detection and Signaling: Multiple Sensor Based Fire Detection, Smoke Characterization, Human Response and Emergency Communications, Wayfinding and Signaling, Wildfire Applications, Computer Modeling of Detection Applications. Suppression: Advancements in Protection of High Hazard Commodities, Environmental Regulation and Suppression Technologies, Performance of New Technologies and Systems, Computer Modeling of Suppression Applications, Wildfire Applications.
More information at NFPA.org.
Fire Technology: special issue on Engineered Timber Structures Paper submission deadline: 1st Dec, 2013
Timber construction offers sustainability benefits, including low cost and carbon footprint. Current sustainability and carbon sequestration trends in construction are therefore promoting increased use of engineered timber in ever taller and more ambitious buildings. However, concerns around fire safety in these buildings currently hinder their application in many jurisdictions. The performance of various forms of modern engineered timber under credible fire scenarios needs to be assessed to ensure the safety of the occupants and the protection of property.
Papers are invited as part of a special issue of Fire Technology devoted to the state of the art in fire research related to engineered timber construction. Of
interest are research studies (experimental, computational) that may provide the scientific basis for design and regulatory processes which can permit cost-effective construction and occupation of engineered timber buildings which may currently fall outside existing code provisions. These could include: Structural fire resistance, Connection detailing, Thermal and mechanical properties, including reaction to fire, Impacts on fire risk, fire spread and fire dynamics, Fire protection materials/systems, Case studies. Editors of this issue are Prof Luke Bisby, University of Edinburgh, and Prof Andrea Frangi, ETH Zurich. Manuscripts should be submitted to: http://fire.edmgr.com.
Fire Technology: special issue on Fire Hazards in Energy Systems Paper submission deadline: 1st Feb, 2014
Given recent fire disasters like the oil train at Lac-Megantic or the 25th anniversary of Piper Alpha, the ongoing acceleration in energy demand and the new range of technologies introduced call for an in-depth examination of fire safety engineering in the production, storage and distribution of power.
Papers are invited as part of a special issue of Fire Technology devoted to the state of the art in fire science and technology related to energy systems. Of interest are research studies (experimental, computational, theoretical) and case studies that may contribute towards the understanding or the solution of engineering problems. The range of topics of interest is broad and interdisciplinary, and includes: Renewable energies (eg, biomass, wind, solar), Oil and gas (eg, LNG, onshore and offshore), Nuclear plants, Energy storage (eg, batteries, hydrogen), Electrical and other distribution networks (eg, pipelines, rail, shipping), New technologies (eg, oxyfuel, tar sands, shale gas, sustainable buildings). Editors of this issue are Dr Guillermo Rein, Imperial College London, UK and Dr George Boustras, European University Cyprus. Manuscripts should be submitted to: http://fire.edmgr.com.
Fire Technology: special issue on Validation and Fire Modeling Paper submission deadline: 15th Aug, 2014
Validation remains an essential activity for the continuous improvement of computational fire modelling skills. By validation, we refer to the determination of the expected level of accuracy and the range of applicability of a given fire model by means of comparison to experiments (or higher hierarchy models).
Papers are invited as part of a special issue of Fire Technology devoted to validation studies of modelling of any fire phenomena (eg, pyrolysis, flames, compartment fires, wildfires, structural response, toxicity, evacuation). Of interest are topics that contribute towards the understanding of its strengths and
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weaknesses, and include among others: Validation techniques, High-fidelity modeling, Benchmark experiments, Multi-model comparison, A priori vs. a posteriori, Round robin studies, etc. Editors of this issue are Dr Guillermo Rein, Imperial College London, UK and Dr Randall J McDermott, NIST, USA. Manuscripts should be submitted to: http://fire.edmgr.com.
NOTE: There are two more special issues on the works in Fire Technology. The corresponding calls will be released soon. Topics are: Advance industrial fire safety and Smart buildings. Follow us in Twitter https://twitter.com/FireTechnology
Fire Spalling 2013 - 3rd International Workshop on Concrete Spalling due to Fire Exposure. Sept. 25-27, 2013. http://www.firespalling2013.fr
2nd International Symposium on Ultra-High Performance Fibre-reinforced Concrete, Marseille, October 1-3, 2013. http://www.afgc.asso.fr/index.php/uhpfrc2013
13th Annual International Water Mist Conference (IWMC), Paris, France, 16th & 17th October 2013, http://www.iwma.net
2013 SFPE Annual Meeting: Professional Development Conference and Exposition, October 27 - November 1, 2013, Austin, USA. http://www.sfpe.org
The Next Five Years in Fire and Electrical Safety – Updating the Foundation’s Strategic Research Agenda, FPRF, Nov. 13-14, 2013 - Washington, DC. http://www.nfpa.org
1st International Seminar on Fire Safety of Façade, Paris, 14th-15th November 2013, http://facade2013.sciencesconf.org
Annual short course in Fire Safety Design, University of Leeds, UK, 25 –29 November 2013. website
7th Triennial International Aircraft Fire & Cabin Safety Research Conference, December 2-5, 2013, Philadelphia, USA. http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/2013Conference/conference.asp
11th International Symposium on Fire Safety Science, Feb 10 – 14, 2014, New Zealand. http://www.iafss.org/symposium/11th-symposium
Royal Society of Chemistry’s Fire Retardant Technologies (FRT 14), 14- 16 Apr, 2014, Preston, UK.
6th International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security, Marseille, France, 12-14th March, 2014. www.istss.se
SUPDET 2014, Fire Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications Conference, March 4 -7, 2014, Orlando, Florida. nfpa.org.
AMI Fire Retardants in Plastics, May 13-14, 2014, Denver, Colorado
Global Research Update – High Challenge Storage Protection, FPRF, May 22, 2014 – London, http://www.nfpa.org
Structures in Fire (SiF) 2014, Shanghai, China, Jun 11 to 13 2014. http://www.structuresinfire.com
35th International Symposium on Combustion, Aug 2014, San Francisco, California. (submission deadline Dec 5, 2013) https://www.combustioninstitute.org
FIVE (Fire in Vehicles) Conference, Berlin, 1-2 Oct 2014, http://www.firesinvehicles.com
10th International Conference on Performance-Based Codes and Fire Safety Design Methods, Brisbane, Australia, 12-14 Nov 2014. http://www.sfpe.org
7th International Conference on Forest Fire Research, November 17-20, 2014, Coimbra, Portugal. http://icffr2014.wordpress.com
Fire Safety Science News, No 35, Sept 2013: page 50
JOB OFFERS
Research position at NIST, USA The Fire Research Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) seeks outstanding applicants for two-year positions in advanced computational modeling (see attached flyer). Topics include: High-performance computing and visualization for direct numerical simulation (DNS) and large-eddy simulation (LES) of turbulent flames and multi-phase flows, Improved prediction of CO and soot concentrations and flame suppression, Improved LES wall functions for heat and mass transfer, Immersed boundary methods for complex geometry and fluid-structure interaction, Adaptive mesh refinement, LES quality assessment and uncertainty quantification, Pyrolysis, Data assimilation.
U.S. citizens who have received a PhD within the last five years may apply for a postdoc through the National Academies Research Associates Program: http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/rap. Applications are accepted Feb. 1 and Aug. 1each year. The annual salary is $65,600.
Non-U.S. citizens may apply to the Foreign Guest Researcher Program. NIST pays a stipend to support living expenses of approximately $3,500 per month while researchers remain employed by their host institutions. The positions are subject to Visa approval, which is handled in coordination with NIST’s Office of International and Academic Affairs: http://www.nist.gov/iaao
For more information on research opportunities email [email protected]. Information on fire research at NIST can be found at http://www.nist.gov/el/fire_research.
Fire Engineer position at URS London, UK Owing to the continuing success of URS Fire Engineering and its increasing work load that requires CFD analysis, we are keen to immediately employ an expert in fire dynamics and computational methods to undertake analytical consultancy work. Ideally, the successful candidate has one or more of the following: experience and respect, a higher degree (PhD or Master’s) and chartered status. He/she should have experience in applying CFD to tunnels and/or buildings and be able to apply British fire safety regulations and standards to complex situations. Familiarity with NFPA codes will be an advantage. When the occasion demands, there will be the need to develop fire strategies for various types of complex buildings. URS is a 50,000 staff worldwide consultancy, with its International Division based in the UK. The fire engineering group is based in our London Victoria office, located between Victoria and Westminster. Our work currently spans transportation structures (air, rail and road), large residential and commercial buildings and industrial facilities (including nuclear and waste recycling). If you are interested, please send me an email ([email protected]), with your CV attached. Interested candidates can apply also through the URS website's Careers pages.
Research Associate at University of Glasgow, UK Job Purpose: You will contribute to a project “Combustion & Gasification Engineering (CombGEN): development of robust computational resources for optimising the processes of combustion and gasification of various sources of fuel energy”, working with Dr Manosh Paul, Prof. Paul Younger and Dr Ian Watson as well as a wider project team based in Edinburgh and Robert Gordon Universities. Specifically, the job requires expert knowledge in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), and especially its application to modelling of combustion and gasification of multi-phase fuels. The successful candidate will also be expected to contribute to the formulation and submission of research publications and research proposals as well as help manage and direct this complex and challenging project as opportunities allow More information at http://edin.ac/19v5Twz or email Paul Manosh ([email protected]).
Research Associate at University of Ulster, UK There are three new posts of Researcher Associates in Hydrogen Safety at the HySAFER Centre at the University of Ulster. Two posts are for European projects SUSANA and HyResponse (application deadline for both is 18th of September 2013). One post is for an EPSRC project (UK) in safety of hydrogen storage (deadline is 30th of September 2013). For more information, contact Prof Molkov [email protected]
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Researcher in Residence at University of Maryland, USA The Department of Fire Protection Engineering is pleased to announce that the J.L. Bryan Chair endowment is available to support researchers of high standing in residence at the University of Maryland. Individuals selected to be supported by this fund must be of the highest professional and academic caliber, dedicated to serving and advancing Fire Protection Engineering. Applicants from other academic institutions (in or outside of the U.S.) or scientists and engineers from laboratories are especially encouraged to apply. Recipients of support will be expected to be engaged in an area of research which complements research interests of the faculty of the department, including ongoing research or areas of new research for possible subsequent collaboration. Recipients would also be expected to become an integral part of the department during their stay. This would involve interacting with graduate students engaged in related research topics and perhaps being part of thesis committees. Recipients may also consider giving a series of lectures on their area of expertise and propose teaching all or a part of a course. Applicants should develop a short (1- to 2-page) description of what activity they would pursue while at the University of Maryland with this support. Such a description should identify whether the individual is interested in a 6 or 12 month stay at the University. Preferred months to start are August and January of any calendar year. Some funds are available for salary, travel, and accommodation. Candidates should submit a proposed budget for their visit. Applicants should send the short description and curriculum vitae to Dr. James Milke, Professor and Chair, of the department at [email protected]. Any applicants seeking additional information about the support should contact Dr. Milke. Dr. John L. Bryan known affectionately as the "Prof." by his students, served as Chair and Professor of the Department of Fire Protection Engineering from the establishment of the department in 1956 until his retirement from the University of Maryland in 1993.
PhD Studentship at University of Maryland, USA Several exciting opportunities for students interested in pursuing a PhD at the University of Maryland starting Fall, 2013, Spring, 2014 or Fall, 2014 are available. One opportunity is focused on modeling smoke movement through naturally-ventilated atria in green/sustainable buildings. The project will be co-advised by Profs. Michael Gollner and Andre Marshall in collaboration with Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Students with a strong background in fluid mechanics and experience in using PIV equipment are especially encouraged to apply. The project includes both experiment and theory with a great opportunity to train in fluid mechanics, fire and sustainability.
Another opportunity to work on real-time modeling of wildland fires is also available with Profs. Michael Gollner and Arnaud Trouve. Students with a strong background in theoretical, experimental or numerical techniques of combustion and fire are encouraged to apply.
Interested students should contact Prof. Gollner at [email protected] or visit his website, www.gollnerfire.com for more information.
PhD Studentship at WPI, USA Applications are being sought for a qualified and motivated student to undertake PhD studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in the area of fire risk and performance analysis. Pending continued satisfactory academic and research performance, the successful applicant will be provided with tuition and stipend support for up to three years under a funded research project, Quantification of Green Building Features on Firefighter Safety. (A brief overview of the project is provided in the News section of this newsletter.) While it is expected that there will be significant overlap between the PhD and the research project, the successful candidate will be expected to create a new and meaningful contribution to the field of fire protection engineering / fire risk and performance analysis, in addition to helping fulfill the defined research aims of the project. The successful candidate will also be expected to provide teaching assistance in the area of risk-informed performance-based design for fire. Candidates should have as a minimum a Bachelor’s degree in a field of engineering closely related to project and study aims. A Master’s degree in closely related field is beneficial. Candidates must meet the requirements for graduate admissions at WPI (http://www.wpi.edu/admissions/graduate) and become accepted into the PhD program in Fire Protection Engineering prior to appointment. In addition to completing the application into the FPE PhD program, interested candidates should send a letter of interest, their research aims and objectives, a copy of their transcripts, and at least three academic / research references to Professor Brian Meacham ([email protected]). Applications and associated information are requested to be submitted by 22 November 2013. The target start date of this position is 13 January 2014.
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PhD Studentship at University of Cantabria, Spain Comprehensive pyrolysis models adopt a material science perspective, and describe the heat-driven physical-chemical transformation of the virgin solid into solid, liquid and gaseous products. While these models have the ability to capture the influence of the gas-to-solid thermal loading on the rate of production of flammable vapours, they typically include a large number of unknown parameters that require optimization against experimental results. The GIDAI Group- Fire Safety Research and Technology (http://www.gidai.unican.es) from the University of Cantabria will commence a research project concerned with pyrolysis modelling of some building materials. GIDAI Group wishes to recruit a student who starts his/her PhD and will undertake this project over the next three years. The salary will be linked to Spanish official grants for PhD students (FPI Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad). The successful candidate will have experience in computational fluid dynamics modeling and mathematical optimization techniques (skills in programming would be appreciated), background with a good student record and knowledge of fire safety engineering. Experience using comprehensive pyrolysis models would be considered an advantage. The successful candidate must have excellent written and oral skills in English. We will also be pleased to accept people coming with their own grant. Contact: Prof. Daniel Alvear at [email protected].
PhD Studentship at DTU, Denmark We are looking to hire a PhD student for a new project at the Department of Civil Engineering of Technical University of Denmark on In-Situ Burning of Oil on Water and Ice. The project is in collaboration with Ali Rangwala (WPI) and Janne Fritt-Rasmussen (DCE). The work will predominantly be experimental and will start in December or January. Motivated and qualified students interested in moving to Copenhagen for their PhD studies, please contact Dr Jomaas at [email protected]. More information at this website.
PhD Studentship at University of Ulster, UK Applications are invited for a PhD studentship in Fire Science and Technology in FireSERT, University of Ulster. Candidates should hold a first or upper second class honours degree in Engineering or a cognate area. Successful candidates will enrol as of 1 October 2013, on a full-time programme of research studies leading to the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The studentship will comprise fees (Home and EU) and an annual stipend of £14,000. It will be awarded for a period of up to three years subject to satisfactory progress and is tenable in the Faculty of Art, Design and Built Environment (FADBE) at the Jordanstown Campus. The closing date for receipt of completed applications is 16 September 2013. Interviews will be held during September, 2013.
The Research topic proposed must be in some area of Fire Dynamics and Fire Materials. We are particularly interested in the following areas: Flammability properties from small scale experiment, Fire spread and fire growth, Fire dynamics modeling. If you wish to discuss your proposal or receive advice on research in any of the aforementioned areas please contact: Professor Michael Delichatsios, [email protected]
PhD Studentships at University of Edinburgh, UK PhD in Fire Safety Engineering: Dynamics of wind-blown. Fires in a windy environment (e.g. forest fires, fires in high-rise buildings and fires in tunnels with longitudinal ventilation) have occasionally been observed to burn in a more efficient manner and produce higher flame temperatures than might be expected for diffusion flames, but this phenomenon has not been adequately investigated to date. Consequently, current computer fire models cannot adequately simulate wind blown fires. This project will focus on computational fluid dynamics modelling of the enhanced mixing and more efficient combustion in wind blown fires. Initial informal enquiries may be made to Dr R Carvel [email protected] and www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=46211
PhD in Fire Safety Engineering: Intelligent Egress. Intelligent egress has been proposed as a novel approach to enhancing evacuations from fire emergencies by means of “way-finding” systems which exploit live information gathered from building sensors. Under conventional approaches to evacuation, occupants are not normally provided with any aides to selecting egress path, and it is known typically follow the route they are most familiar with. This can lead to inefficiencies and may also violate design assumptions on escape route utilisation, with an increase in overall evacuation times, thereby increasing the possibility that occupants may be exposed to unsafe conditions. he current project would seek to further advance intelligent egress systems by harnessing technologies to support the determination of efficient egress routes and effective transfer of information for diverse end users. Initial informal
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enquiries may be made to Dr S Welch [email protected] and http://www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=46386&LID=452
PhD Studentship at Imperial College London, UK The Haze Lab at Imperial College London is looking for a top UK or EU student interested in fire science and modelling who would like to do a PhD thesis with Dr Guillermo Rein on computational pyrolysis. The student will be hosted in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Ours is one of the best and largest Mechanical Engineering departments in the world. Start date would be shortly after Sept 2013. This studentship includes registration fees (£4,000 per year) and a stipend (~£1,300 per month, tax free) for three years and a half. The requirements are a 1st honours MEng or MSc degree in engineering (ME, ChE, CE, physics, mathematics or chemistry), and a high motivation in advancing the state of the art of science and technology.
It is with great sadness that the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) announces the passing of Philip DiNenno, P.E., FSFPE. Phil was an unparalleled leader and visionary in the fire protection engineering community.
In the mid-1980s, Phil DiNenno, Jack Watts, Doug Walton, Craig Beyler and Dick Custer had an idea to create a collection of calculation methods for fire protection engineering. From this idea emerged the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering, of which Phil was the Editor-in-Chief for all four editions. “I doubt that there is anyone else who could have turned a vision of creating a handbook of fire protection engineering into reality, and do it entirely using volunteer authors and editors,” said Morgan Hurley, Technical Director of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
The passage of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer limited the manufacture of fire suppressants known as “halons,” which created a huge vacuum for the protection of special hazards. Phil worked internationally with organizations like the United Nations Environment Program, the US EPA, the U.S. Navy,
and the National Fire Protection Association to develop test standards and criteria to identify suitable replacements.
DiNenno was a past-president of the Society of Fire Protection Engineers. In recognition of his accomplishments, stature, and service to SFPE and the fire protection engineering profession, Phil received almost every one of SFPE's awards, including the membership grade of Fellow (1996), the Harold E. Nelson Service Award (1998), the President’s Award (1989 and 2002), the Arthur B. Guise Medal (2005), and the D. Peter Lund Award (2009).
DiNenno was a graduate of the University of Maryland, from which he received a degree in fire protection engineering. He was the president of Hughes Associates, a fire protection engineering research and consulting firm.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in Phil’s memory to the Carroll Hospital Center Foundation for the development of their new Cancer Center, 200 Memorial Avenue, Westminster, MD 21157 or to the Ivymount School for Autism, 11614 Seven Locks Road, Rockville, MD 20854.
With permission from SFPE.This article was first published in the Blog of SFPE at http://blog.sfpe.org/2013/08/sfpe-mourns-loss-of-fellow-and-past.html
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CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
To continue succeeding with this newsletter, it is important that we receive contributions from the IAFSS membership at large. Please consider submitting articles, letter to the editor, images, news, announcements or job offers related to fire safety science or IAFSS members. These could be collected from your department, institution, country or region. Please send your contributions to the Editor-in-Chief (Guillermo Rein, [email protected]). For the next issue (No. 36), the deadline for
