July 30, 2025

212 - A glossary for evacuation with Enrico Ronchi and Ezel Üsten

212 - A glossary for evacuation with Enrico Ronchi and Ezel Üsten
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212 - A glossary for evacuation with Enrico Ronchi and Ezel Üsten

When experts from different disciplines attempt to collaborate on complex problems, such as evacuation modelling, we often discover that we're not speaking the same language. Even seemingly simple terms like "density," "velocity," and "distance" carry dramatically different meanings across physics, psychology, engineering, and computer science.

In this episode, we present the "Glossary for Research on Human Crowd Dynamics," a remarkable community effort that brought together over 60 researchers to create a shared vocabulary for those studying human movement in crowds. In this episode, I speak with two key contributors to this project: Professor Enrico Ronchi from Lund University, who helped organise the original workshop that spawned the first edition, and Ezel Üsten from Jülich Forschungszentrum, the corresponding author of the newly released second edition.

They reveal the fascinating process behind creating consensus among diverse scientific perspectives – from the intensive week-long workshop at the Lorentz Centre where the first edition was born, to the year-long online collaboration that produced the expanded second edition. We explore how the glossary handles controversial terms like "panic" (often misused in media and research alike), unpack the nuances of seemingly straightforward concepts like "fundamental diagrams," and discuss why the absence of citations was a deliberate choice to prevent territorial disputes.

What emerges is not just a practical resource for evacuation research but a blueprint for how scientific communities can build collective understanding across disciplinary boundaries. As we face increasingly complex challenges in fire safety engineering, this kind of "community wisdom" becomes invaluable. Whether you're a researcher, practitioner, or simply curious about how experts bridge communication gaps, this conversation offers rich insights into the power of shared language in advancing our understanding of human behaviour during emergencies.

And here is the link to the glossary: https://collective-dynamics.eu/index.php/cod/article/view/A189

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The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.

00:00 - Introduction to Glossary for Crowd Dynamics

03:28 - Origins of the Research Glossary

10:40 - From First to Second Edition

19:19 - Creating Consensus Across Disciplines

35:00 - Key Terms: Fundamental Diagrams

42:02 - Defining Density and Distance

49:15 - Controversial Terms: Panic and Behavior

56:05 - Value of Shared Understanding

01:01:25 - Closing Thoughts on Community Projects

WEBVTT

00:00:00.621 --> 00:00:02.407
Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show.

00:00:02.407 --> 00:00:07.831
You know I'm big on promoting good communication in fire science and outside fire science.

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How to communicate fire problems to all the stakeholders is one of the main challenges that we have today and that the future fire protection engineers will have to be better at.

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Simply that is.

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But communication good communication comes with some prerequisites, and one of those prerequisites is that we actually understand each other, which is not necessarily granted, especially when we talk about technical terms across multiple disciplines.

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Often than not that you have to talk to your colleague who specializes in computer science, you have to talk to an architect, you have to talk to an electrician, someone who's managing water supply, etc.

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There are some terms, even very basic terms, that will be understood differently by those people.

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Therefore, having some sort of a shared glossary is an extremely, extremely useful tool for our practice.

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For fire safety engineering at large, we do not really have a shared glossary.

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There are some stuff like ISO standards on nomenclature, etc.

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But it's not what I'm talking about in this episode.

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Today's podcast episode is about glossary for research on human crowd dynamics.

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It's a second edition of this glossary and it includes a lot of stuff related to evacuation, which is, of course, a huge part of fire safety engineering.

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And, what's interesting, this is a community effort, a bunch of people that sat down together and agreed on how we should refer to some very basic, fundamental, most important terms for the human evacuation or human crowd dynamics research.

00:01:55.781 --> 00:02:13.947
As the second version has been published in open access and links are, of course, in the show notes, I've chosen to invite some people into the podcast to talk over why you did and how you actually manage building a glossary that's useful for the whole community and, as I said, it's a massive effort.

00:02:13.947 --> 00:02:31.675
So the list of authors is is incredible, and the organizing committee itself that's julianne adrian, nicolai boda, thomas Chattagnon, alessandro Corbetta, john Drury, claudio Feliciani, anna Zibin, enrico Ronchi and Ezel Usten.

00:02:31.675 --> 00:02:48.793
And out of this very, very long list of amazing people who committed to this resource, I've invited Professor Enrico Ronchi from Lund, who has been in the podcast multiple times and he has been involved in organizing the first meeting that started this glossary, and well, you'll been in the podcast multiple times and he has been involved in organizing the first meeting that started this glossary, and well, you'll hear in the podcast.

00:02:48.793 --> 00:03:03.985
And I've also invited Essel Usten from Jülich Forschungszentrum, who is the corresponding author of the second edition, so we have a good representation from the origins of the resource, from the recent update of the resource tells a lot of interesting things.

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You will learn some stuff about evacuation, some stuff that we perhaps understand differently than others.

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You'll learn how to build a glossary.

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You'll learn how a great community project in the sphere of fire safety engineering looks like.

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So very worth it.

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Stay with us.

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Let's spin the intro and jump to the episode.

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With us, let's spin the intro and jump to the episode.

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Welcome to the Firesize Show.

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My name is Wojciech Wigrzynski and I will be your host.

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The FireSense Show is into its third year of continued support from its sponsor, ofar Consultants, who are an independent, multi-award-winning fire engineering consultancy with a reputation for delivering innovative safety-driven solutions.

00:04:02.211 --> 00:04:15.912
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00:04:15.912 --> 00:04:32.050
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00:04:32.050 --> 00:04:40.589
If you're keen to find out more or join OFR Consultants during this exciting period of growth, visit their website at ofrconsultantscom.

00:04:40.589 --> 00:04:42.745
And now back to the episode.

00:04:42.745 --> 00:04:49.704
Hello everybody, I am joined today by Esl Usten from Yulish Forging Centre, IS7.

00:04:49.704 --> 00:04:50.586
Nice to meet you.

00:04:50.987 --> 00:04:53.045
Hi, wojciech, nice to meet you as well.

00:04:53.045 --> 00:04:54.410
Thank you for the invitation.

00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:58.824
And our common guest, I guess, enrico Ronchi from Lund.

00:04:58.824 --> 00:05:00.048
Hey, enrico Hi.

00:05:00.067 --> 00:05:05.548
Wojciech, very nice to see you and hear you again and thanks again for the invitation.

00:05:06.040 --> 00:05:08.242
How are recruitments for your ERC going?

00:05:08.242 --> 00:05:09.487
Did you open some positions already?

00:05:09.740 --> 00:05:15.709
Well, you know, formally the project starts in October, but I hired the first PhD student.

00:05:15.709 --> 00:05:20.403
So I have the first one in but you know, four more people to go.

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I know I can imagine.

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That's why I'm opening the podcast.

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There's the biggest amount of listeners right now.

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If you're looking for a job in the evacuation space, Enrico, you call him.

00:05:28.884 --> 00:05:31.004
Yeah research on human crowd dynamics.

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A second edition of that open access document has been published.

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So henceforth I've invited some of the people from the very, very long list of people on the first page to talk about the document.

00:05:57.031 --> 00:06:16.492
I've reflected I have not covered the first edition of that glossary, so perhaps in this interview we can go a little bit back to the past and perhaps let's discuss, like why human crowd researchers, human crowd dynamics researchers, have sit down in one room to make a common glossary for them.

00:06:19.334 --> 00:06:25.158
I was contacted by some research at University of Eindhoven.

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It was Alessandro Corbet and Federico Toschi.

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They were aware of this Lorenz Center in the Netherlands, which is like an interesting concept because it allows to organize workshop one week long and they provide all the logistics so a venue, food, accommodations and everything for workshops of a size of about 40, 50 scientists.

00:06:47.911 --> 00:06:57.232
And then he approached me and he said you know why we don't do something multidisciplinary on the topic of psychology and physics of human crowd dynamics?

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And that's where we started thinking about this.

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Okay, we bid for this because it's on a competitive process.

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It was the two of them myself, armin Seyfried from Jülich was involved and also John Drury.

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That is a psychologist, is Ann Templeton's PhD supervisor you probably hear his name a lot if you work in evacuation because he's one of the big names in psychology there.

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And we got this.

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We won the bid and we had this event.

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It was one week long.

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It's a fantastic concept because, again, you are basically sitting in a common share space for one week.

00:07:37.232 --> 00:07:42.939
A bunch of brilliant minds I mean, I don't want to make it sound elitist, but it's kind of by invitation.

00:07:42.939 --> 00:07:47.244
So we tried to have a group of a mix of fire engineers.

00:07:47.244 --> 00:07:51.404
So I was the fire engineer there and I invited a couple of colleagues that work in fire engineering.

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But there were psychologists, there were physicists, there were also people working on computer science, and all with the shared interest in this topic of crowd dynamics, which is very linked to evacuation.

00:08:03.947 --> 00:08:06.333
And in this week we had planned a set of activities.

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First we were doing this kind of like pitch of our research because not everyone knew each other.

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And then, among these activities, one thing that we said you know, if you have a psychologist sitting in the same room with a physicist, it's very likely that they don't talk the same language.

00:08:22.569 --> 00:08:35.447
So we said, okay, one important thing that we need to do for the whole community is to have a shared glossary where we can understand each other, because, you know, understanding each other is the first step to be able to work together.

00:08:35.980 --> 00:08:37.225
And that's where the idea came.

00:08:37.225 --> 00:08:52.086
And during this week we had, like, some sessions entirely dedicated to having working groups that were drafting some definitions, first of all to identify what were topics that were important to cover and define, and then try to define those.

00:08:52.086 --> 00:09:05.250
And the outcome of this workshop, one of the outcomes of this workshop was actually this first edition of the glossary which, again keeping in mind that the core of the work was done in person in one week, it's quite impressive.

00:09:05.250 --> 00:09:14.294
But I mean, if you put 40, 50 researchers in a room and you give them the freedom to think, good things are going to come out of this.

00:09:14.802 --> 00:09:16.620
So it's quite an interesting concept.

00:09:17.020 --> 00:09:19.570
I can comment on your idea of this symposium.

00:09:19.570 --> 00:09:22.288
We don't do this enough in modern science.

00:09:22.288 --> 00:09:25.629
For some reason we don't have time for this in modern science.

00:09:25.629 --> 00:09:43.793
If you can reflect on that, like how often you have time to slow down, sit down with a bunch of peers and really really focus on one thing, like if you think, like 1920s nuclear physics, that's what the conferences were.

00:09:43.793 --> 00:09:49.610
You were meant to go there, show some ideas, sit down and confer, talk to each other, right?

00:09:49.610 --> 00:09:57.924
Not like today's modern rush 15 minutes, you're out of time, next one, next one, next one coffee break, dinner.

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Go home right and rush to your plane.

00:09:59.945 --> 00:10:06.244
Oh man, I'm jealous and I congratulate that you have first found that concept.

00:10:06.244 --> 00:10:13.330
Congratulations to Lawrence Center for organizing a venue, because modern science is really striving for things like that.

00:10:13.330 --> 00:10:18.894
And if the glossary is one of the outcomes of that meeting, then fantastic.

00:10:18.894 --> 00:10:20.716
At least we have something to chat about.

00:10:20.716 --> 00:10:27.044
And moving from that first edition to second edition, you just wanted another conference, is that?

00:10:27.942 --> 00:10:35.606
the reason no, no, no, no, no, no Maybe SL can describe that, because that came from Jülich.

00:10:35.606 --> 00:10:37.846
Then yes, exactly.

00:10:38.361 --> 00:10:45.729
So the second edition is actually also coming from not understanding each other in our department.

00:10:45.729 --> 00:10:48.708
So we were trying to conduct a research.

00:10:48.708 --> 00:10:54.873
So before we started recording, I told you guys that on my PhD I was working on motivation.

00:10:54.873 --> 00:11:07.124
And at some point in our department there is one person mostly Shrivey, but he's a computer scientist and we decided to simulate motivation, so make a pedestrian model out of it.

00:11:07.124 --> 00:11:16.730
And then we sat down, we tried to understand each other a lot and after a couple of months we realized that we have no understanding of each other at all.

00:11:16.730 --> 00:11:24.657
And during that time we were constantly checking the first glossary to be able to effectively communicate with each other.

00:11:24.657 --> 00:11:33.153
Right, but in the end we thought, okay, for example, we were talking about motivation, but motivation as a concept wasn't included in the first glossary.

00:11:33.153 --> 00:11:37.991
So we thought, okay, maybe there are also more concepts that we can think about.

00:11:37.991 --> 00:11:52.808
Then we had some internal meetings some other people in ULEs were included in the project as well and we decided, okay, maybe this should not be an inside project, but rather then we should do the second edge.

00:11:53.279 --> 00:11:57.150
Then the first thing we did, we contacted former organizers.

00:11:57.150 --> 00:12:09.905
So Enrico, I think all the former organizers apart from Federico responded yes, and so we created our organizational committee and then we talked about it.

00:12:09.905 --> 00:12:10.769
So what should we do?

00:12:10.769 --> 00:12:21.706
Should we make it a chill process without rushing, without meeting, without trying to create a workshop or something like that, make everything online or face-to-face?

00:12:22.226 --> 00:12:39.288
And in the end, we decided to do a really chill and long process without pressuring ourselves, purely online, which we can do, all of us can do as a side project, yeah, as like a side from what we are actually doing, but we can also focus on this from time to time.

00:12:39.288 --> 00:12:53.475
And, yeah, we just created the stages, like, we suggested concepts, we voted on these concepts, we created writing groups, we wrote all the concepts which are voted above the threshold, for example.

00:12:53.475 --> 00:13:04.722
And yeah, so, rather than meeting in an intense way for one week or a couple of days, I think we did it in one year, or maybe plus a couple of months of days, I think we did it in one year or maybe plus a couple of months.

00:13:05.365 --> 00:13:20.221
Well, time efficiency is another thing, but it's good to hear that projects like this can be also completed in a modern way of science, no matter how much I hate the modern way of science teams meetings and stuff like that but it's good that you can also pull something out of this modern way.

00:13:20.221 --> 00:13:28.152
A question that immediately comes to my head is what granularity of definitions you think about.

00:13:28.152 --> 00:13:35.548
Like, because you said motivation was a concept for you and that's probably some high level definition.

00:13:35.548 --> 00:13:38.385
I would say A definition of evacuation.

00:13:38.385 --> 00:13:39.408
This is the fire science show.

00:13:39.519 --> 00:13:45.352
I know the glossary is on human crowd dynamics, but the audience is definitely interested in the evacuations.

00:13:45.352 --> 00:13:46.886
Evacuation is a high-level concept.

00:13:46.886 --> 00:14:02.224
I guess how deep you go with those definitions, because eventually you have to reach a point where the definitions only make sense for this narrow group of people who are studying this particular thing and this definition will bring no value to others who are studying something completely else.

00:14:02.224 --> 00:14:11.470
So how did you decide on how big chunks to define mutually within those I don't know 40-ish scientists of different fields in the room?

00:14:12.460 --> 00:14:20.765
So the first thing, maybe I can directly say this we didn't impose that many rules on concept definitions.

00:14:20.765 --> 00:14:23.323
Okay, so what was important for us?

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That the writing groups should write what they feel this is appropriate for our interdisciplinary communication or understanding.

00:14:32.051 --> 00:15:10.190
And I mean while editing, since I haven't been working on all these concepts, I only worked on the concepts that we wrote in our writing group and I haven't been involved also in recall, probably, but during the editing I I read all of them intensively and, from what I'm seeing, everybody tried to focus on given a general context plus what that particular concept means in our language and, if I can add something, I mean, the only few rules that we had was that each concept should not be too long.

00:15:10.460 --> 00:15:17.125
So I think we had something like 200 words, like they couldn't have one page just on one concept.

00:15:17.125 --> 00:15:22.269
And if it was, if there were sub-concepts, then we should break it down into concept and sub-concept.

00:15:22.269 --> 00:15:32.532
The second thing we had a very long discussion on references because, you know, we didn't want this to be an exercise of people pushing for their own research or their own papers.

00:15:32.532 --> 00:15:45.849
So, if you look actually at the definitions, we don't have references in them, and that's a deliberate thing that we did because, as I said, we wanted this to be a shared common understanding rather than.

00:15:45.849 --> 00:15:53.644
You know, I am the one with more muscles and I'm going to push in what I think is the definition, because I wrote this in paper X or paper Y.

00:15:53.644 --> 00:16:04.450
So I think that's a very good starting point that we had, because then it gave a bit more peace of mind to people that okay, my definition is not going to be referenced there anyway.

00:16:04.450 --> 00:16:12.831
So then I can work together with others to find something that everyone understands and can make use of.

00:16:13.480 --> 00:16:40.888
Another aspect which is important, as I say, was the process because making a bit of a step back, not everyone wrote everything, as I said, so we had some sort of a process for splitting definitions and trying to have, you know, a reasonable workload for all of us to begin with, because first we had to you know draft concepts and then define those, refine them and then everyone will read everything.

00:16:40.888 --> 00:17:13.900
But you know, at the beginning the drafting was done in chunks by different people, different subgroups, for different concepts, and that also, you know, if you have to write five definitions, you can put a lot of time in those, rather than if you need to write you know a hundred of them, and you know that made the process much smoother because we could have you know someone that was, because we could have you know someone that was, and we also made sure that people that were involved in the definitions, but also there was at least someone that was super keen on having that, or having proposed it or voted for it to be.

00:17:13.900 --> 00:17:29.847
So we had, like, some expert in that very topic for each of the definition, along with, maybe, people that were outsiders, but they were on another field but still had to understand what was going on, because that was the challenge that we had right, because we had four main disciplines.

00:17:29.847 --> 00:17:39.068
We had physics, psychology, computer science and engineering, and so again, okay physics, social science, engineering, computer science, okay.

00:17:39.390 --> 00:17:43.900
Yes, so you know, sometimes the communication is not as easy between those fields.

00:17:44.040 --> 00:17:45.867
That's the point of making a glossary to make it.

00:17:47.021 --> 00:17:48.346
Yeah, indeed, indeed indeed.

00:17:49.000 --> 00:17:56.111
So, as I mentioned writing groups, so the definitions were split among writing.

00:17:56.111 --> 00:17:57.946
What consisted of the writing group?

00:17:57.946 --> 00:18:02.932
Was it just a group of, let's say, engineering specialists talking about engineering concepts?

00:18:02.932 --> 00:18:05.760
Or you mixed people together and put them in working groups?

00:18:06.423 --> 00:18:12.138
in each group we put all the people from all disciplines, okay, um, so what is it?

00:18:12.138 --> 00:18:16.567
The minimum was four, because we had four, let's say, discipline category.

00:18:16.567 --> 00:18:34.344
So either four people, five people or six people I don't remember the exact numbers, but in in each of them there was at least one either psychologist, sociologist, engineer, computer scientist or physicist, if I can come back to what Enrico said about also the citations and references.

00:18:34.403 --> 00:18:45.816
It's also, like you know, we kind of abuse them in this or we use them a lot in the science because of the way how scientific achievement is being tracked A lot of them, let's be fair.

00:18:45.816 --> 00:18:54.727
You said that someone could perhaps try to put a definition or cite their own work because that's going to reflect better on them in their scientific assessment.

00:18:54.727 --> 00:19:14.763
And while I believe in this, you know breadcrumbs, pathway to the original concepts and highlighting contributions of people who came before us in the world of science, I also see value, like you had 40 people in the room who are experts within their own fields and what you've created.

00:19:14.763 --> 00:19:18.451
I've picked a term from Roger Harrison from afar.

00:19:18.451 --> 00:19:21.563
He used the term community wisdom.

00:19:21.623 --> 00:19:36.951
You know, describing some ways how smoke control definitions were made in the 90s, like there was a committee and they together decided this is the best way and he referred to that as community wisdom and I think this is a really elegant term.

00:19:36.951 --> 00:19:44.713
Perhaps it needs a definition in some glossary of terms describing groups of people, but I find it very pleasant to use.

00:19:44.713 --> 00:19:48.583
You said general context and then explaining what it means.

00:19:48.583 --> 00:19:58.633
Do we have an example that would be closer to the world of fire, perhaps evacuation definitions, where you came up first with a broad definition and then had to narrow it down.

00:19:59.220 --> 00:20:26.835
If you look at, for instance, the definition of egress and egressibility, we actually decide to merge those two together and you know we first start with a very simple sentence explaining what egress is so like okay, people leaving or exit the space, which is quite intuitive to understand for everyone and then we go more in depth into explaining how this is linked to other concepts like evacuation, how it's linked to accessibility when we talk about aggressability.

00:20:26.835 --> 00:20:50.192
So, starting from something that really everyone can understand, even if they are not specifically involved in that area, and then going more in depth into the nitty-gritty details of the definition, so that even the one that is into that area could see themselves, they could be able to recognize themselves into these definitions.

00:20:50.192 --> 00:21:03.981
Because the challenge with everything that is kind of standardized in here you know I come with my experience with ISO and all the standardization groups so you want people to be able to read things and recognize themselves in those things.

00:21:03.981 --> 00:21:10.432
You don't want to have people reading some definition, reading some text, and say, oh, I would have never written it like this.

00:21:10.539 --> 00:21:23.767
So often it's better to write something more general, more agreeable in a sense, so that people don't hate it, than have something very specific that maybe a specific group will like a lot but maybe someone will hate it.

00:21:23.767 --> 00:21:43.205
So that's a bit of the challenge when you write this kind of documents that it's more important people don't hate it because they will use it than not that someone super loved a specific definition and I see this was the same in my experience because I was involved in the glossary for ISO fire safety group and it's the same thing.

00:21:43.205 --> 00:21:49.268
Sometimes people are picking on one definition because they were hating something and things will never progress.

00:21:49.268 --> 00:22:00.488
So it's much better to have things that people can agree with to some extent than have people only a portion of people loving that and another one hating it, because we need to have something that everyone uses.

00:22:01.319 --> 00:22:03.126
What level of consensus have you sought?

00:22:03.126 --> 00:22:04.584
What was it like?

00:22:04.584 --> 00:22:08.104
A unanimous decision that, yes, this is the final definition.

00:22:08.104 --> 00:22:08.906
Did you vote on them?

00:22:09.339 --> 00:22:15.526
J, yes, Ezel, maybe you can describe this because you set up this nice voting system and also consensus system.

00:22:16.480 --> 00:22:16.540
E.

00:22:16.540 --> 00:22:18.284
So I mentioned stages.

00:22:18.284 --> 00:22:25.734
We had approximately six, seven stages, and, and in each of them it contains a different consensus system.

00:22:25.734 --> 00:22:38.269
Let's say we first started with the suggesting of the concepts that we want to see in the second edition and we had a huge list right Like maybe 150 different concepts.

00:22:38.900 --> 00:22:43.748
Sorry, by word concept you mean a kind of a definition that's in the glossary, because you're using that Just a word.

00:22:43.748 --> 00:22:45.231
Yeah, a concept of a definition that's in the glossary because you're using that Just a word.

00:22:45.231 --> 00:22:48.792
Yeah, a concept is a word, and then it gets a definition in the glossary.

00:22:48.792 --> 00:22:49.755
So, yeah, okay, that's okay.

00:22:49.880 --> 00:22:50.984
I started from the beginning.

00:22:50.984 --> 00:22:51.968
Actually, that's fair, yeah.

00:22:51.968 --> 00:23:00.922
So everybody suggested we created a sort of like a website and it was like just type your concept and hit enter, that's it.

00:23:00.922 --> 00:23:11.165
And then we collected all these, we grouped them and then we sent to everyone every single router and said, like, vote on them, which one would you like to see more?

00:23:11.165 --> 00:23:27.152
And then we had basically a quantity of the weights of these concepts and then we saw, okay, like, for example, flow, flow rate, this had, I don't know, 50 volts Out of 65 routers.

00:23:27.152 --> 00:23:28.571
50 volts, it's amazing.

00:23:28.571 --> 00:23:29.752
Okay, we took all that.

00:23:29.752 --> 00:23:31.232
So we set a threshold.

00:23:31.232 --> 00:23:34.253
Above the threshold, we took all the concepts.

00:23:34.515 --> 00:23:41.757
Then we distributed all these concepts to these writing groups which we randomly selected.

00:23:41.757 --> 00:23:46.699
It wasn't that random because we want to book everyone from each discipline to these groups.

00:23:46.699 --> 00:23:49.488
So each group had three, four concepts.

00:23:49.488 --> 00:23:59.130
Let's say they wrote these concepts even though in that group, for example, they have a concept but they are not the expert on that concept.

00:23:59.130 --> 00:24:03.565
Still, we wanted them to write this and then they wrote it.

00:24:03.565 --> 00:24:20.807
We called these draft definition drafts and then we posted in a shared folder and we said to everyone okay, now it's time to review and you have unlimited rights, review anything that you want.

00:24:20.807 --> 00:24:25.886
Then our shared folder became a crazy, a monster.

00:24:25.886 --> 00:24:34.199
In the end it was really like maybe 10, 15 seconds you needed to wait to open the file.

00:24:34.199 --> 00:24:36.810
It was crazy, like it was really big.

00:24:36.810 --> 00:24:53.070
All these comments, all these reviews and in the end the reviews were actually cumulative reviews, so everybody was seeing the review of the person who did it previously and they were like cumulatively getting reviewed.

00:24:53.070 --> 00:24:57.532
And the last review we took it as the final definition.

00:24:58.634 --> 00:25:03.077
Okay, I also had a question about because it's called Glossary for Research.

00:25:03.077 --> 00:25:15.005
So was it immediately thought as a tool for researchers, scientists, or also engineers, practitioners, or that's a byproduct and you just focus on?

00:25:15.046 --> 00:25:16.987
researchers.

00:25:16.987 --> 00:25:26.813
I'm an engineer, so I see value of this kind of tool also for engineers because, at the end of the day, there are many concepts that are unclear.

00:25:26.813 --> 00:25:37.839
If you look, for instance, at our fire engineering field, there is still a lot of misconceptions and terms that are not clearly defined.

00:25:37.839 --> 00:25:48.491
But I think an important thing is that we wanted to give this kind of meaning of research, in a sense that we say, okay, this is not just a bunch of friends deciding on something, this is a bunch of scientists.

00:25:48.491 --> 00:25:50.438
Let's say that they're supposed to know what they're doing.

00:25:50.438 --> 00:25:58.763
So to give more credibility of it, I think to to have the keyword research has been important because, again, an engineer will probably cite something that comes from research.

00:25:58.884 --> 00:26:03.075
Sometimes researchers are more would probably cite something that comes from research.

00:26:03.075 --> 00:26:07.567
Sometimes researchers are more skeptical in citing something that comes from engineering.

00:26:07.567 --> 00:26:09.719
So in a way it's a.

00:26:09.719 --> 00:26:38.486
Again, we were writing a glossary, so words are very important, but it's a way to push for credibility, keeping in mind that not everyone was necessarily only a scientist, because we had also in the first edition, some people that were more from the practice world, for instance, of crowd dynamics, you know, people involved in crowd management, on crowd events and so on, but most people are actually scientists.

00:26:38.486 --> 00:26:43.507
I mean, if you look at the list, I think pretty much almost everyone has a PhD in there.

00:26:43.507 --> 00:27:04.789
So I think the word research is important because it sends this clear message that this is a tool developed by scientists and, of course, engineers will find this useful, especially in our world of fire safety engineering Because, again, we touched on a lot of topics for which still, if you go around and ask around, I'm pretty sure there is a lot of misconceptions.

00:27:06.297 --> 00:27:20.026
If you would narrow this discussion to concepts relevant to fire evacuation, were there many of those concepts that other groups of researchers in the room would completely differently understand than the fire researchers?

00:27:20.836 --> 00:27:28.482
Well, you know, statistically, if you have 60 plus authors, there would be one or two that disagree on something.

00:27:29.023 --> 00:27:29.665
Different opinion.

00:27:31.044 --> 00:27:39.881
And I mean there are some concepts which have been very much debated, I mean panic, crowd, crush, stampede, just to mention a few, even fundamental diagrams.

00:27:39.942 --> 00:27:57.332
You know, I was the one starting questioning some of the definition that we had of fundamental diagram, because there is this never-ending discussion into how fundamental should something be to be called fundamental, because we can find many fundamental diagrams if you look at children, adults, people with disabilities and so on.

00:28:02.634 --> 00:28:07.887
But I mean the nice feeling was, though, that everyone was with a positive attitude, so everyone had the mindset that we are doing something for the good of our community.

00:28:07.887 --> 00:28:23.839
I mean, there were no money involved in this, as I say, while for the first edition at least, we had the workshop paid, let's say, by this Lawrence Center, we had all the facility and all the venue paid, so it was also a nice excuse to meet with a couple of friends there, but this was all on a volunteer basis.

00:28:23.839 --> 00:28:30.861
So we, the whole effort was to try to build also a positive community sense.

00:28:30.861 --> 00:28:36.163
So we're doing something for free, we're doing something on a volunteer basis and we're doing this for the good of the whole community.

00:28:36.163 --> 00:28:43.166
So we never really experienced someone like having a negative attitude or like, let's say say, being stuck on a topic.

00:28:43.166 --> 00:28:49.104
Actually, even the conflicts that we had in terms of definition, there were very few and we were solved pretty smoothly.

00:28:50.277 --> 00:29:10.997
I don't recall, ezel, maybe you remember how many there were, but we talk about five, six terms that had not too many right, I mean originally we were thinking, we thought we are going to have many conflicts and we were thinking, okay, we need to arrange a meeting among all the organizers and in the end we had, like what you said, five, six, which we can actually solve them through mailing.

00:29:10.997 --> 00:29:12.403
We didn't even have to meet.

00:29:12.403 --> 00:29:13.941
It was really interesting.

00:29:14.295 --> 00:29:15.809
Perhaps the human crowd dynamics?

00:29:15.809 --> 00:29:18.361
Researchers are more civilized than the rest of us.

00:29:18.361 --> 00:29:19.986
Teach us.

00:29:20.895 --> 00:29:21.799
I would be interested.

00:29:21.799 --> 00:29:23.184
I mean to be honest with you.

00:29:23.184 --> 00:29:25.741
This is an exercise that every community should do.

00:29:25.741 --> 00:29:35.279
I would love to have a fire safety engineering glossary, but again there would be a challenge to have 65 plus people.

00:29:36.477 --> 00:29:49.949
Which is kind of interesting because you know, in fire you would have modelers, you would have experimentalists, you would have practitioners, you would have academics, each of them having perhaps a different view on even the simplest things like what constitutes a fire.

00:29:50.134 --> 00:29:59.564
Like that's a definition, you could battle for a while and I assume it could be as similar as constituting the definition for evacuation, definition for evacuation.

00:29:59.604 --> 00:30:18.785
But what you previously said about the definitions, that rather are, you know, not excluding anyone that you find a piece of yourself in the definition and you sacrifice perhaps some of the stuff you would like in a definition for it to be more broadly representative to others, and then again you can build on the definition.

00:30:18.785 --> 00:30:19.988
It's not that this is it.

00:30:19.988 --> 00:30:21.723
It's not that evacuation is only this one page in your glossary.

00:30:21.723 --> 00:30:22.248
It's not that this is it.

00:30:22.248 --> 00:30:24.518
It's not that evacuation is only this one page in your glossary, it's much more.

00:30:24.518 --> 00:30:37.839
But that's a common starting point and if you approach a crowd psychologist, someone who's modeling evacuation, a computer scientist or evacuation specialist, this is something that opens the doors.

00:30:37.839 --> 00:30:45.830
I guess we're capable of enhancing our FIRE definitions through the wisdom of the other groups as well.

00:30:45.830 --> 00:30:56.971
I wonder, like if you were going with the definition of, let's say, evacuation, like how much of that definition is what the FIRE people wrote and started with and how much did it evolve during the discussion?

00:30:57.516 --> 00:31:07.329
I have to say that's one of the least controversial definitions because at the end of the day we decided to split it in sub definitions which looked at different aspects of it.

00:31:07.329 --> 00:31:12.807
So you know, we looked at face evacuation, self evacuation, community evacuation, assist evacuation.

00:31:12.807 --> 00:31:39.827
So we kind of split it in sub parts and again, with this period of having everyone be able to recognize themselves into that definition, so maybe some parts of it will probably be more specific because, for instance, if we look at, one of the sub-definitions was controlled evacuation, which is probably something that you use a lot in crowd management and management of events, much less in a fire, for instance.

00:31:39.827 --> 00:31:46.888
But I mean you still have things like phased evacuation or assisted evacuation, which are very typical of a fire, for instance, but I mean you still have things like face evacuation or assist evacuation, which are very typical of a fire scenario.

00:31:47.015 --> 00:32:00.226
So again, the spirit was this, and I can make a nice parallelism I mean, the way I see writing a glossary is like being married, so the best is to find compromises.

00:32:00.226 --> 00:32:04.301
The things that function are the ones that are in the middle.

00:32:04.301 --> 00:32:09.815
I mean, if someone wants to be stuck in their position, things will not move forward.

00:32:09.815 --> 00:32:18.230
So in order to not have a divorce in a glossary, you need to compromise and find something that is making everyone happy in the middle.

00:32:19.174 --> 00:32:21.021
Most of the time, I would agree.

00:32:21.021 --> 00:32:24.539
Yeah, compromises, but we also did something also.

00:32:24.539 --> 00:32:27.448
What is it like a special version of this compromise?

00:32:27.448 --> 00:32:35.189
In some definitions we also added the disagreeing definitions, the disagreeing parts as well.

00:32:35.575 --> 00:32:41.869
We had situations in which, indeed, we had like contrasting definitions in a way, and we wanted to still bring those forward.

00:32:41.869 --> 00:32:44.075
That's a bit the idea like contrasting definitions in a way, and we wanted to still bring those forward.

00:32:44.075 --> 00:32:48.601
That's a bit the idea, but maybe, hazar, you can bring some examples.

00:32:49.020 --> 00:32:52.486
The biggest example, I'd say, would be fundamental there.

00:32:53.287 --> 00:33:03.945
I remember, for instance, in that definition, that I was the one saying okay, we need to state very clearly and explicitly not everyone likes the idea of fundamental ground.

00:33:04.015 --> 00:33:10.107
As I say, I'm one of those that use that because everyone uses it, but I'm not super fond of it.

00:33:10.214 --> 00:33:28.349
But we wrote something like okay, keep in mind that even if we use this concept, still we need to be aware that because of multiple reasons demographics, cultural differences and so on we need to be aware that there may be different fundamental curves that relate to density, speed and flows.

00:33:28.795 --> 00:33:45.884
So this kind of idea of not just saying this is what it is, but also give a bit of reasoning of what is behind what the field recognizes and acknowledges from both sides, I think is really helpful because it really helps reflect the whole picture of the field.

00:33:45.884 --> 00:34:01.260
And again, that's actually as good that you brought this forward, because that's one of those, let's say, conflicts that we had in terms of definition, that we had to work more when we are drafting the revised version, because this was not a new definition, this was a revised definition.

00:34:01.260 --> 00:34:15.942
I recall, indeed we had the first definition and indeed the process of doing the second glossary was also to get feedback from the community and get feedback from different people and hear the sense of the community, because these are kind of living documents.

00:34:15.942 --> 00:34:17.240
They're meant to be living documents.

00:34:17.240 --> 00:34:20.182
We don't want this to be the final version.

00:34:20.182 --> 00:34:21.065
That's the whole idea.

00:34:21.146 --> 00:34:23.594
Yep, I mean for my listeners.

00:34:23.594 --> 00:34:26.282
I would highly recommend its open access.

00:34:26.282 --> 00:34:27.106
So you just open it.

00:34:27.106 --> 00:34:28.440
It's 32 pages.

00:34:28.440 --> 00:34:34.362
It's not overfilled with additional content, it just gets you straight into the definitions and the glossary.

00:34:34.362 --> 00:34:43.242
That's the point of having a glossary Plus it gives some additional information at the end about how the glossary was made, which we're covering in this discussion as well.

00:34:43.242 --> 00:34:52.527
So I highly actually recommend going through the glossary and eyeballing it, at least checking out the relevant definitions and see if you understand them in the same way.

00:34:52.954 --> 00:34:54.579
Or perhaps is there something else.

00:34:54.579 --> 00:35:10.960
Maybe you could try to do an exercise and actually go through some of those concepts and definitions and you can give me a condensed version, because some of them are actually longer, and discuss how important it was for the general field of human crowd dynamics, how important it is for fire people.

00:35:10.960 --> 00:35:15.074
The glossary is arranged in an alphabetical order.

00:35:15.074 --> 00:35:19.023
I'm not sure if you're talking in alphabetical would be the best.

00:35:19.023 --> 00:35:24.043
Perhaps let's start with something we already touched the fundamental diagrams and then we'll move on to some other concepts.

00:35:24.043 --> 00:35:28.980
So, enrico, you claim to be the biggest fan of fundamental diagrams, so take this one.

00:35:29.701 --> 00:35:31.346
No, but I mean this is, for instance.

00:35:31.346 --> 00:35:40.079
I have to say there is a history behind this, because this is a concept which is very widely used, for instance, in the world of physics and also in the world of traffic engineering.

00:35:40.079 --> 00:35:51.947
You know, by education I'm a traffic engineer, so the first time I actually heard about fundamental diagrams was not when I was looking at location and pedestrian dynamic, but it was earlier in my education when I was looking at traffic flows.

00:35:51.947 --> 00:35:59.512
And again, this idea of having a general understanding of how to relate these properties of movement can be cars, it can be people.

00:35:59.512 --> 00:36:00.634
In our case, it's actually very useful.

00:36:00.634 --> 00:36:00.815
Movement.

00:36:00.815 --> 00:36:01.606
It can be cars, it can be people.

00:36:01.606 --> 00:36:03.003
In our case, it's actually very useful.

00:36:03.306 --> 00:36:10.583
And I understand that if you work in the physics field, you want fundamental properties, you want fundamental relationship.

00:36:10.583 --> 00:36:13.123
It's something that you're really used to.

00:36:13.123 --> 00:36:15.681
The laws of physics is not something that you're used to question.

00:36:15.681 --> 00:36:17.280
It's something that you know.

00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:18.222
It's how it is.

00:36:18.222 --> 00:36:27.021
And I mean for your listeners that are in the fire modeling or fire science or, more specific, in fire dynamics, that's how it is.

00:36:27.081 --> 00:36:42.382
You're not gonna go there and start questioning the laws of physics the speed of light is not an opinion, it's a constant right, and if something in physics is a fundamental diagram, it's just a relationship, how these things change, based on a sound theory, and here it's kind of observation experiments, right.

00:36:43.364 --> 00:36:53.362
And that's the thing, because the idea of this comes from experimental data and then it's been widely used in modeling to try to have some sort of relationship that can represent how people move.

00:36:53.362 --> 00:37:26.181
But reality is that the more we go on, the more we discover that there is so much nuances in what we call fundamental diagrams, in terms that if we change some of the boundary conditions, so if we change the population, if we change the setup where we are doing experiments, if we change the culture of people you know, we have seen this with COVID, like people keeping different distances depending on where they come from, and so on and so on, all these kinds of properties in which we have more and more data, fortunately, can affect those relationships.

00:37:26.181 --> 00:37:45.139
And that's why, again, when we put together this definition, it was important to acknowledge that there are factors that can make what we call this fundamental diagram not necessarily valid for everything, but we need to actually acknowledge that there is not one fundamental relationship for everything.

00:37:45.139 --> 00:38:00.947
So, but again, here it comes, the negotiation and the compromise, because I totally understand you know, I work together with, with physicists very often and it's a completely different mindset and again, going on the opposite end of this, of the of the picture.

00:38:01.027 --> 00:38:07.929
When you have a psychologist which I guess they are trained from day one as they're correcting critical thinking you question everything around you, right?

00:38:07.929 --> 00:38:10.083
So nothing is fundamental, almost.

00:38:10.083 --> 00:38:15.735
So it's kind of important to acknowledge these two sides and go a bit in the middle.

00:38:15.735 --> 00:38:26.509
Sometimes as engineers I feel like we are in the middle, so we are kind of close to the physical sciences, the hard sciences, in a way that we have to trust center fundamental properties.

00:38:26.509 --> 00:38:33.356
But on the other hand we are super exposed as well from all these concepts that come from human behavior when we work, especially in evacuation.

00:38:33.356 --> 00:38:37.405
So we kind of have this role of trying to compromise things.

00:38:37.405 --> 00:38:45.447
But again, I see this as a good example to exemplify the challenges that you have when you want to put together this type of documents.

00:38:46.014 --> 00:38:55.945
Hearing you speak about the process and the challenges within the process it makes me appreciate the definition even more, because now, looking at the definition, it really reflects what you said.

00:38:55.945 --> 00:39:03.568
It says the fundamental diagram describes the transport properties of crowds by illustrating the relationship between density, speed and flow.

00:39:03.568 --> 00:39:06.543
Yes, we know that fundamental diagram is essentially that.

00:39:06.543 --> 00:39:11.675
The definition is much longer than that, but in the end it ends with imposing an empirical curve on a model.

00:39:11.675 --> 00:39:18.722
Without considering demographic, procedural, geometric or cultural differences may lead to misleading or inappropriate conclusions.

00:39:18.722 --> 00:39:29.780
That's, in the essence, the consensus that you have maintained to build on this difficult definition and all together, this is very useful.

00:39:29.780 --> 00:39:37.659
If someone is about to start a PhD and they need to refer to the fundamental diagrams and they reach to your glossary, they will have a good starting point in there.

00:39:37.920 --> 00:39:42.139
And I mean, if we think about file engineering, you know we often see these curves.

00:39:42.139 --> 00:39:45.586
You know in the SFP handbook and so on.

00:39:45.586 --> 00:39:58.681
And if you're new to this, if you don't know everything that is behind these curves that relate to, for instance, speed and density or flow and density, you just take them for granted.

00:39:58.681 --> 00:40:03.951
But it's important to be aware of these kinds of definitions because that makes you understand that it's not the same as the speed of light.

00:40:03.951 --> 00:40:04.536
You know it's.

00:40:04.536 --> 00:40:09.126
There may be parts in the, in the documents that we're used to read, which is what it is.

00:40:09.126 --> 00:40:10.637
Instead, those kind of curves.

00:40:10.637 --> 00:40:14.264
There are a whole set of assumptions behind.

00:40:14.746 --> 00:40:18.829
Many people even don't understand that often they are design curves in fire engineering.

00:40:18.829 --> 00:40:19.934
They're not necessarily empirical.

00:40:19.934 --> 00:40:30.972
So you start from empirical curves but then you make them more conservative and then you see a lot of papers that start questioning oh my experimental data don't match with the equations that I see in the SFPM.

00:40:30.972 --> 00:40:33.574
Of course those are conservative, they're meant for design.

00:40:33.574 --> 00:40:36.585
They're not necessarily matching empirical data.

00:40:36.585 --> 00:40:39.724
They are based on empirical data but they have a different scope.

00:40:39.724 --> 00:40:44.047
But this is the kind of discussion that we want to open with this kind of definitions.

00:40:44.514 --> 00:40:45.800
What about the terms that are?

00:40:45.800 --> 00:40:55.282
Let's say, I would expect them to be easy to define, Like there's two next to each other, density and distance, Like both feel like something very obvious to define.

00:40:55.282 --> 00:41:02.179
But actually the definitions in the book are quite nuanced and I see our computer science colleagues in those definitions a lot.

00:41:02.179 --> 00:41:09.661
And that's very interesting because indeed in relationship to fundamental diagram, like density is your input and you read out the flow rate.

00:41:09.661 --> 00:41:16.764
But if you're a computer scientist and you have to solve a discrete model, that is quite a big, big challenge.

00:41:16.764 --> 00:41:20.704
So let's try to tackle those two definitions, if we can.

00:41:21.125 --> 00:41:21.786
For density.

00:41:21.786 --> 00:41:27.347
You know the story behind this is that you probably know that there are too many ways of calling density.

00:41:27.347 --> 00:41:33.809
You know the classic thing is people per square meter, which is what we often use in fire engineering.

00:41:33.809 --> 00:41:45.061
But you know it's not the only way of doing this and there is a lot of way to actually calculate densities that come from the world of computer science or physics and so on, which look at other things.

00:41:45.061 --> 00:41:47.914
I mean the very famous one is the one from Predachinsky and Milinsky.

00:41:47.914 --> 00:41:53.827
You probably are aware of this Vojtech that you know in Russia they were doing in the 70s, 80s.

00:41:54.175 --> 00:42:07.474
This alternative method is the one that is very popular in fire engineering, where you actually use the ratio between areas so that it's kind of able to, for instance, factor in different body sizes, which is something that you cannot do directly.

00:42:07.474 --> 00:42:13.403
If you use the classic equations that you have in the SFP handbook, for instance.

00:42:13.403 --> 00:42:20.063
And you know the computer scientists, the physicists, they use all sorts of methods.

00:42:20.063 --> 00:42:23.608
I mean the group in Ehrlich, some of your colleagues, for instance.

00:42:23.608 --> 00:42:30.588
They were the ones among the first ones bringing in the concept of Voronoi, the composition, into a calculation of density.

00:42:30.668 --> 00:42:49.061
I'm not going to go into the details of this, but the idea is to basically check, study density, calculating distances between people to some extent, and this may sound more complex, but again, for a person that comes from psychology that's a good thing, for instance for someone like Zeld.

00:42:49.536 --> 00:43:14.364
I mean, you're not necessarily into the details, I guess, of different ways of calculated density that are happening in physics you still appreciate, with a document like this, the fact that you are aware now of the existence of different methods to even call density, what we call density, and that's an important step, because otherwise we just the alternative was just to say, okay, people per square meter, that's it.

00:43:14.364 --> 00:43:24.666
But then someone will not recognize themselves into that Because, as I said, I've seen a bunch of papers and reviewed a bunch of documents which define density in very different ways.

00:43:24.666 --> 00:43:33.074
Even if we look at fire safety codes, sometimes you know they talk about the area per people, not people per area, or they look at other concepts.

00:43:33.074 --> 00:43:46.903
So, as I said, it's important to bring this kind of other alternative definitions into the glossary so that everyone can recognize into that from my perspective, I agree with everything that you say, enrico.

00:43:46.963 --> 00:44:08.951
Firstly, uh, but like in terms of density, for example, and my main motivation would be the effects of density right, the psychological effects, but at the same time, I wasn't aware that density or distance, as a matter of fact, contains this rich history or definition of conversation behind it.

00:44:08.951 --> 00:44:18.989
So now I learned it, but I mean, during my PhD and then postdoc, I also learned all these things and I don't know effectively conduct researchers on that as well.

00:44:18.989 --> 00:44:20.688
But, for example, now we have a new psychology PhD on that as well.

00:44:20.688 --> 00:44:28.202
But, for example, now we have a new psychology PhD and, for example, she's coming from a really different area, neuropsychology.

00:44:28.202 --> 00:44:30.867
She doesn't know any concepts that we are using.

00:44:30.867 --> 00:44:36.360
She knows the general definition of density or distance, but she doesn't.

00:44:36.360 --> 00:44:45.581
She wasn't aware of our context in the end, and the first thing we did we just showed the glossary and it was brilliant.

00:44:45.581 --> 00:44:47.440
Then we just talked about it.

00:44:47.996 --> 00:44:48.599
It kind of works.

00:44:48.599 --> 00:45:06.719
I mean, even here we discovered the richness of the definition inside a term that you would feel it's very simple as density, and in the same way, the computer scientists could perhaps find simplicity in some terms that we use I don't know panic, and they would discover the richness within that term.

00:45:06.719 --> 00:45:11.465
Maybe let's talk some closer to yours, Ezel.

00:45:11.465 --> 00:45:12.668
You studied motivation.

00:45:12.668 --> 00:45:16.054
How did motivation end up in the glossary and are you happy with the definition?

00:45:16.054 --> 00:45:17.440
Do you see yourself in the definition?

00:45:18.036 --> 00:45:20.248
To be honest, I haven't worked on motivation at all.

00:45:20.248 --> 00:45:21.958
I am really.

00:45:21.958 --> 00:45:28.934
I mean, in the end it was like a lottery, right, Motivation didn't fall on me, Okay, but it was okay.

00:45:28.934 --> 00:45:30.742
I tried to review it.

00:45:30.742 --> 00:45:49.804
Then I realized that it doesn't need any further reviewing at all because whoever did it made a brilliant joke and I think for that definition we had only one or two really minor reviews, like adding one sentence or like changing one word or something like it, and from my point of view it was brilliant.

00:45:49.804 --> 00:45:51.902
It's drastic.

00:45:52.617 --> 00:45:53.802
How about response time?

00:45:53.802 --> 00:46:01.829
Because I also feel that this would have a very strong connotation with FHIR and perhaps it could be understood differently in different groups of code experts.

00:46:02.110 --> 00:46:06.431
And perhaps it could be understood differently in different groups of cloud experts.

00:46:06.431 --> 00:46:18.730
And I will say it's pretty different when it comes to what we have in fire engineering, what we have in human cryodynamics, because often response time, when we look into crowd dynamics, is referred to the immediate response in a sense.

00:46:18.730 --> 00:46:32.762
So how do you respond, for instance, in a situation like collision avoidance, like someone in counter flow going against each other, or if you are changing your trajectory because you have someone moving next to you or overtaking?

00:46:32.762 --> 00:46:58.137
So, as I said, this is something that it's important again for someone like me that, for instance, I don't necessarily use that constant, that in that way, because often for me, response time as a fire engineer, you use it as a synonym of delay time or pre-vacation time instead, in this specific field, as another meeting meaning which is quite important to be aware of.

00:46:58.137 --> 00:46:59.961
Because again, here comes the.

00:46:59.961 --> 00:47:11.081
If I'm sitting on a table with someone that comes from computer science and is trying to model counterflows and talks about response time, I will sit there and say what are you talking about?

00:47:11.155 --> 00:47:14.719
Response time, counterflow, response time no, this has nothing to do.

00:47:14.719 --> 00:47:15.476
Why?

00:47:15.476 --> 00:47:19.034
Because it can happen that we use the same wording for different concepts.

00:47:19.034 --> 00:47:32.181
And that's again when a glossary helps you because, again, you don't have to be necessarily aware of everything that is used in different fields, but in this way, you know, we can have an agreed way of using a given definition.

00:47:32.181 --> 00:47:46.300
And again, that's meant to be helpful both for people that are new to the field but also for people that are in the field but are not necessarily familiar with how that concept is used in that specific application.

00:47:46.300 --> 00:47:47.664
That is, human crowd dynamics.

00:47:47.664 --> 00:47:53.547
Because, as I said, very often in fire engineering, when we talk about response time we do talk about something else.

00:47:54.016 --> 00:47:57.788
Yeah, another interesting to me is that there's a term behavior.

00:47:57.788 --> 00:48:04.226
It has a very general definition and then there are like nine different sub-definitions of different things.

00:48:04.226 --> 00:48:06.521
That looks like a fun one.

00:48:06.521 --> 00:48:15.550
So how did you come up with the definition and the challenges related to that and usefulness of the term behavior in terms of FHIR perhaps?

00:48:16.456 --> 00:48:19.646
I think this is one of the emerged concepts.

00:48:19.646 --> 00:48:22.440
So I mentioned the first thing that we did.

00:48:22.440 --> 00:48:41.586
We suggested new concepts, right, or revisions of the old concepts, and there were, like many different behavior related suggestions, and what we did was we just checked whether it makes sense to merge and in the end we maybe 90, yeah, almost 90% of it we merged.

00:48:41.586 --> 00:49:02.126
And then we had this structure, a concept which is the umbrella concept, then the sub-concepts, and then we just distributed these concepts to the writing groups and I can imagine and if I remember correctly, it is as it is the definitions, because they are not coming from the same working groups.

00:49:02.126 --> 00:49:11.965
They are a little bit different from each other, but in the end they fit quite well, even though coming from different minds.

00:49:11.985 --> 00:49:14.556
I find those definitions a little interesting.

00:49:14.556 --> 00:49:21.775
I wanted to end by asking about how did you finish the definition for the panic, for the P word?

00:49:21.775 --> 00:49:29.947
But I also see there's a non-rational behavior definition, there's irrational behavioral definition, so it's very interesting.

00:49:29.947 --> 00:49:35.447
Can you tell me about the concept of panic and how it was defined in the glossary and the consensus?

00:49:35.447 --> 00:49:36.617
How did it look like?

00:49:36.617 --> 00:49:41.418
And then maybe we can talk about the rational, non-rational behaviors as well, why there's the distinction.

00:49:42.021 --> 00:49:56.559
I can give a bit of history on this, because we had a very long discussion when we had the workshop in Leiden and the Lawrence Center about having or not having words that are, let's say, misused or misunderstood in the field.

00:49:56.559 --> 00:50:03.547
Because at the beginning we were thinking, okay, let's not have these words, otherwise people will just start using them even more.

00:50:03.547 --> 00:50:13.025
But then we thought, okay, there is the risk that if something is unclear because it's not defined, it will be even more often misused.

00:50:13.025 --> 00:50:25.663
So it's better to have something and advice very specifically on what it is and what is not, in a way that people can be hopefully more aware of the misuse of those, of those wording.

00:50:25.663 --> 00:50:37.110
And you know, panic is the typical example where we still see a lot of people unfortunately even you know in the field that use this word in the wrong way.

00:50:37.110 --> 00:50:40.661
Especially media is still very often used.

00:50:41.235 --> 00:50:53.264
But I mean the idea there was to try to clarify what are the boundaries of what panic is, in a way that people could have a clear, let's say, understanding on where to not use it.

00:50:53.264 --> 00:50:58.121
Because, for instance, in a part we say the term is often used as a vague catch-all for all range of phenomena.

00:50:58.121 --> 00:50:59.360
So we say this explicitly.

00:50:59.360 --> 00:51:03.329
You know people use this for everything, while it's not the way it should be used, so we say this explicitly.

00:51:03.329 --> 00:51:05.826
You know people use this for everything, while it's not the way it should be used, so we've been very explicit on this.

00:51:05.826 --> 00:51:19.771
So the idea is that, rather than hiding behind the knowledge that we wrote this have, is to try to be very explicit also on what are common mistakes and what are common misunderstanding in this kind of words.

00:51:19.771 --> 00:51:21.101
We did the same with Stampede.

00:51:21.101 --> 00:51:26.940
We had also the wording of Stampede, which is another controversial term.

00:51:26.940 --> 00:51:35.500
I don't know, ezel, how do you see this from the perspective of social science, but I guess that's another field in which this is very much debated.

00:51:35.539 --> 00:51:42.494
Right, it is, it is highly debated, but I think we did a good job Of panic as a concept in the glossary.

00:51:42.494 --> 00:51:50.099
I mean, there weren't any conflict regarding panic, because maybe I can also talk about the evaluation of some of the concepts.

00:51:50.099 --> 00:51:52.391
Right, not evaluation, sorry, evolution.

00:51:52.391 --> 00:51:59.298
The panic firstly started as a part of a suggestion of blacklisted concepts.

00:51:59.298 --> 00:52:06.518
So panic stampede no, stampede wasn't in it but, like all the controversial concepts, were inside of it.

00:52:06.518 --> 00:52:32.577
And then we were discussing whether we actually define or not define or define the whole blacklisted concepts as why they are getting blacklisted the relation with media, the relation with misuse and everything and then we decided to actually create individual concepts for each of them and effectively explain everything in all the angles that we can cover.

00:52:33.065 --> 00:52:37.416
So this was the, let's say, evolution of the panic.

00:52:37.416 --> 00:52:39.068
For example, response time.

00:52:39.068 --> 00:52:41.856
It also contains a history as well.

00:52:41.856 --> 00:52:57.177
I think it started with a merge of three different concepts response time, reaction time and something else and so the definition should have been the grand definition of all these three concepts.

00:52:57.177 --> 00:52:58.690
Or, for example, flow.

00:52:58.690 --> 00:53:12.338
It was just flow at the beginning, but during the discussions we decided to have an extra sub-concept, which is flow rate, and in the end it merged, or rather it divided to two different concepts.

00:53:13.186 --> 00:53:16.896
I also like that you have definitions of things like experiment model.

00:53:16.896 --> 00:53:25.596
I think it's actually quite nice to have sound definitions of those concepts among researchers.

00:53:25.596 --> 00:53:30.902
I think we're narrowing down to the end of the interview to have a sound definitions of those concepts among researchers.

00:53:30.902 --> 00:53:36.909
I think we're narrowing down to the end of the interview, so unless there's a term that you're dying to talk about, we can wrap on, or maybe we can take one more.

00:53:37.291 --> 00:53:48.291
Well, I want to just bring up that, for instance, even very simple concepts require a lot of thinking if you are in the field, like I mean, distance we talked about, we mentioned about, we mentioned it before.

00:53:48.331 --> 00:53:49.793
I mean distance, how difficult can be distance?

00:53:49.793 --> 00:53:53.730
Well, if you work on a grid, it's not so easy to define this.

00:53:53.730 --> 00:53:56.074
It's not as easy, let's say.

00:53:56.074 --> 00:54:02.034
But even velocity, I mean, if you, that's another area in which there is a lot of misuse and misunderstanding.

00:54:02.034 --> 00:54:14.001
You know, I teach this kind of stuff with the vacation simulations to fire engineers and there is you know, it's classic exam questions and I see people misunderstanding the concept of desire, velocity, observe velocity.

00:54:14.001 --> 00:54:26.978
So to have this kind of some concepts that explain how even a very simple concept, which is something that you learn probably in primary school, almost velocity, can have many nuances, I think it's actually useful.

00:54:26.978 --> 00:54:39.349
Because that's another thing that often can happen People may, especially if they are not in the field, or they approach this field in a tangential way, they may think they know.

00:54:39.490 --> 00:54:49.219
And that's the worst, because if I hear a word that I never heard of and I'm not familiar with, yes, maybe I'm keen in going into the glossary and search for it.

00:54:49.219 --> 00:54:51.746
Okay, I hear the word in behavioral repertoire.

00:54:51.746 --> 00:54:56.137
Well, I've never heard of this, probably, so I'm going to go and read about it.

00:54:56.137 --> 00:55:01.367
But if I hear velocity, oh, I know what velocity is and I don't need someone to explain me what is velocity.

00:55:01.367 --> 00:55:19.958
Well, in this specific world, if we talk about desired velocity, if you talk about observed velocity, if you talk about free velocity, these are all nuanced definitions that need an explanation because they make a lot of a difference, potentially, if you don't understand what you're talking about, right?

00:55:19.958 --> 00:55:31.025
So the concept of desired velocity and how this is linked to motivation, indeed, and the speed that people would like to go, but they cannot go because they're actually interacting with space or they're interacting with other people.

00:55:31.025 --> 00:56:19.958
So I think this is an important step and that's why I think, if you're working in this field, you should have a whole read through, not thinking, okay, I'm going to just jump into the things that I know, that I don't know, because maybe I read some keywords that I never heard of, but actually, I really advise people to spend some time and reading the whole document, because it can give a lot of nuances, a lot of details that you may overlook and say, okay, now that I read it, I understand it and I think I have my mind more clear on what this means, but without having those kind of definitions very clear, it's very possible, and it's very often, that people misunderstand concepts, and I mean imagine doing a design and misunderstanding an actual velocity for a desired velocity.

00:56:19.958 --> 00:56:25.237
I mean you may be completely misunderstanding what a vacation time might have in a building.

00:56:25.237 --> 00:56:35.976
So that's what I'm saying in terms of doing this kind of exercise being very useful for the whole community and that's why I would advise any community to do something like this.

00:56:36.085 --> 00:56:47.036
I mean I really wish, I mean we have, you know, we have something like this in fire engineering because we have a nice document with the glossary and terminology, but it's not the same thing.

00:56:47.036 --> 00:57:14.896
I will say that something that is driven purely by scientists and has that kind of drive by scientists, with that kind of mindset, that is defined and used for research, is slightly different than something that comes from some somewhere like ISO, where there is a lot of practitioners, industry, when maybe they're more interested, I would say, sometimes in defining things more clearly, with more narrow definitions, because you know, iso has to be clear, they have to be standard.

00:57:14.896 --> 00:57:17.030
So there is no space, no room for interpretation.

00:57:17.030 --> 00:57:28.653
It needs to be 100% obvious what you're saying and there is no room for saying, okay, you cannot use this in this way, or there is a history behind this word, because that's not what the purpose of ISO is.

00:57:28.653 --> 00:57:38.733
So I really wish, for instance, that at some point someone will bid to this Lawrence Center and have a full week with a bunch of fire scientists.

00:57:40.927 --> 00:57:41.610
Was the food good?

00:57:41.610 --> 00:57:43.005
Well, the food was okay.

00:57:43.005 --> 00:57:44.836
I mean, it was not Italian.

00:57:44.856 --> 00:57:45.278
Was the food good?

00:57:45.278 --> 00:57:45.983
Well, the food was okay.

00:57:45.983 --> 00:57:47.648
I mean you know, it was not

00:57:47.708 --> 00:57:51.416
Italian, but you know, you touch a very sensitive topic here.

00:57:52.577 --> 00:57:56.856
I know I should have wondered Don't go that path, don't go that path.

00:57:57.257 --> 00:58:15.536
But I mean Don't go that path, but even the simple fact of having a conference where all the logistics are ready, you have rooms, you have space for workshops, space for lectures, space for everything and I have a bunch of scientists sitting in the same office in the same space without having the destruction of laptops answering emails.

00:58:15.536 --> 00:58:19.952
You know you had a workshop, everyone had a task, so you couldn't get distracted.

00:58:19.952 --> 00:58:27.152
You know, go and answer some emails or pick your phones and do all their stuff.

00:58:27.152 --> 00:58:28.751
No, everyone had a task.

00:58:28.751 --> 00:58:34.672
So in that kind of setup, really get a lot of stuff done in a very short time.

00:58:34.672 --> 00:58:42.494
So I really wish at some point someone will do something like this, which is unfortunately very uncommon In our field.

00:58:42.494 --> 00:58:43.931
I don't think I've seen things like this.

00:58:43.931 --> 00:58:44.565
We have summer schools In general in science.

00:58:44.565 --> 00:58:45.166
Don't think I've seen things like this.

00:58:45.166 --> 00:58:45.597
You know we have summer schools.

00:58:46.065 --> 00:58:50.335
In general in science, Enrico, in general in science, I would say this is extremely uncommon.

00:58:50.335 --> 00:58:51.458
You don't have time for that.

00:58:51.458 --> 00:58:53.793
People don't have time to do science.

00:58:53.793 --> 00:59:00.338
We do so much administrative bullshit around our life of a scientist, you don't really have time.

00:59:00.338 --> 00:59:01.751
And this is how you do science.

00:59:01.751 --> 00:59:15.844
No-transcript.

00:59:15.844 --> 00:59:31.282
And it always fascinated me how those researchers, when they had a problem to solve, they would go for like a six-hour in the los alamos mountains around you know los alamos and then they would just discuss and talk and then they would come up with answer.

00:59:31.282 --> 00:59:32.367
We don't do that today.

00:59:32.367 --> 00:59:37.626
Like the best you can do is write an email which still gets the job done, as as shown in the revision.

00:59:37.626 --> 00:59:44.900
But I'm jealous of being able to to be fully connected to this type of work.

00:59:45.206 --> 00:59:51.835
But especially, you know organizations like, again, large organizations like FSS or SFPE.

00:59:51.835 --> 00:59:55.891
I mean, I know now you're a big boss of SFPE Europe, so you're the right person to talk to.

00:59:55.891 --> 01:00:01.974
But you know, for instance, to have a concept like this would be nice to have like, okay, we take three days.

01:00:01.974 --> 01:00:08.094
It's not a conference, it's not someone listening, it's someone that meet in a place for a task.

01:00:08.094 --> 01:00:13.090
So there needs to be a goal, otherwise it becomes just a chat among friends and they cannot go that way.

01:00:13.445 --> 01:00:24.052
But if you have a concrete goal, like a glossary or drafting an agenda for a research agenda or a white paper on a given subtopic, that's actually really effective.

01:00:24.052 --> 01:00:39.273
I mean because, again, picking up the brain of these smart people that we have in all our communities because we have a bunch of very smart people in our communities you don't need necessarily a full week, but having two, three days in which you know you pick different expertise.

01:00:39.273 --> 01:00:42.929
There needs to be that element of multidisciplinary, that element of different perspective.

01:00:42.929 --> 01:00:48.259
There cannot be everyone coming from the same field, otherwise really becomes a bunch of friends deciding on their own.

01:00:48.259 --> 01:00:50.791
It needs to collect different perspective.

01:00:50.791 --> 01:00:52.615
But that would be really nice.

01:00:52.615 --> 01:00:55.737
I'm just launching you an idea, wojciech for something for us.

01:00:55.737 --> 01:00:56.902
Wojciech Białysiak, yeah, yeah.

01:00:58.509 --> 01:01:03.054
We're cooking something like that, maybe not on such a grand scale, but perhaps it should be on such a grand scale.

01:01:03.054 --> 01:01:07.929
I'll definitely work with that as well.

01:01:07.929 --> 01:01:13.092
How was the experience for you as a PhD student tackling with their own you know definition problems?

01:01:13.092 --> 01:01:14.704
Have you found answers in this group?

01:01:14.704 --> 01:01:18.514
Was it fulfilling to do this revision of the glossary?

01:01:19.036 --> 01:01:19.938
No, no, no, absolutely.

01:01:19.938 --> 01:01:25.724
I mean I learned a lot during my time in either organizing or either participating.

01:01:25.724 --> 01:01:26.610
No, I mean I learned a lot during my time in either organizing or either participating.

01:01:26.610 --> 01:01:29.550
No, I mean it was really amazing Like we learned many things.

01:01:29.550 --> 01:01:38.472
Otherwise I would probably not learn or just hear or not think about it that much, so I don't know it was really amazing.

01:01:38.724 --> 01:01:43.177
In the end, did you find a common understanding of motivation with your computer science colleague.

01:01:43.746 --> 01:01:45.373
I mean, we are about to finish that paper.

01:01:45.373 --> 01:01:48.333
Hopefully this year we are going to submit it.

01:01:49.686 --> 01:01:50.086
Let's see.

01:01:50.108 --> 01:01:51.532
I mean, the model is there.

01:01:51.532 --> 01:01:53.391
Now we know what we are talking about.

01:01:53.391 --> 01:01:57.472
We have understood the motivation and how we can computerize it.

01:01:57.865 --> 01:02:04.592
And now, as the glossary is published and you get a nasty comment from a reviewer that it's something else, you can refer them to the glossary.

01:02:04.592 --> 01:02:09.302
No, no, the collective wisdom of of a crowd behavior peep said otherwise that that's.

01:02:09.302 --> 01:02:11.373
That's also a useful, useful thing.

01:02:11.373 --> 01:02:14.027
Um guys, thank you so much for coming.

01:02:14.027 --> 01:02:15.659
The document is in open access.

01:02:15.659 --> 01:02:16.945
The links are in the show notes.

01:02:16.945 --> 01:02:20.295
We highly recommend everyone to go through it.

01:02:20.295 --> 01:02:22.759
See if you recognize yourself in the definition.

01:02:22.759 --> 01:02:24.581
See if there's something you understood differently.

01:02:24.581 --> 01:02:25.150
See if you recognize yourself in the definition.

01:02:25.150 --> 01:02:26.311
See if there's something you understood differently.

01:02:26.311 --> 01:02:29.731
See if we're all on the same page of those important concepts.

01:02:29.731 --> 01:02:35.570
And, of course, human aspect, evacuation, crowd dynamics, important part of fire science.

01:02:35.570 --> 01:02:39.014
So we really should all be on the same page in here.

01:02:39.014 --> 01:02:40.847
Thanks guys for joining me in the Fire.

01:02:40.867 --> 01:02:41.289
Science Show.

01:02:41.289 --> 01:02:42.032
Thanks, wojciech.

01:02:42.032 --> 01:02:43.530
Thanks again for the invitation.

01:02:44.065 --> 01:02:45.027
Yeah, thank you, wojciech.

01:02:45.027 --> 01:02:46.871
It was really nice and that's it.

01:02:46.871 --> 01:02:48.797
I'm not even sure how to summarize it.

01:02:48.797 --> 01:02:50.869
I guess I'll go into the theme of giving back.

01:02:50.869 --> 01:02:53.706
A lot of people would like to give back to the community.

01:02:53.706 --> 01:02:58.114
I think many of us feel blessed for working in fire safety engineering.

01:02:58.114 --> 01:03:14.498
In some odd, twisted way, I would say 90% of people I meet along my pathway came to fire safety engineering or fire safety science by accident or by some odd circumstance, you know, at random.

01:03:14.498 --> 01:03:16.929
It's not that entire childhood you've planned.

01:03:16.929 --> 01:03:25.275
You will be investigating turbulent combustion and I think we found our way through this and it seems we all love it.

01:03:26.025 --> 01:03:27.813
And, yeah, it's a great community of people.

01:03:27.813 --> 01:03:29.612
It's a very, very tiny community.

01:03:29.612 --> 01:03:37.054
It's a very small community that tackles one of the hardest scientific problems of the modern world.

01:03:37.054 --> 01:03:45.416
Therefore, it's a community in which any effort to give back, to build something, to help someone else, is extremely welcome.

01:03:45.416 --> 01:03:50.677
And what you've seen in this podcast episode is not just a glossary for evacuation.

01:03:50.677 --> 01:03:51.911
Of course, that's very important.

01:03:51.911 --> 01:03:54.293
That's why I brought those guys into the podcast.

01:03:54.293 --> 01:03:55.054
We've talked about it.

01:03:55.326 --> 01:04:05.838
It's great that they've built this resource, and the resource itself is amazing, but they also give you a blueprint on how to arrange something that doesn't look like that much work.

01:04:05.838 --> 01:04:15.391
I mean, they finished the first one in a week-long meeting and Dazzle managed to get an update, a big update, through remote work, without any meeting at all.

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So it's a manageable effort.

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Yet it gave community something very, very useful, and I would like to thank again the organizers of this project.

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It's an amazing work and I really hope stuff like that pops out in different spaces of fire safety engineering.

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So that's it for today's Fire Science Show episode.

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Thank you for being here with me, and if you're looking for some fire science, you'll find it.

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Next Wednesday, same time, same place.

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See you there.

01:04:44.110 --> 01:04:45.079
It next Wednesday, same time, same place.

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See you there.

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Cheers, bye.