222 - Integrating WUI risk management and fire safety engineering with Pascale Vacca

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Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show.

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By now I think you are aware of my stance about where wildfire engineering is going.

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I'm pushing this into the podcast as much as I can because I truly believe that engaging fire engineers into solutions of wildfire problems, engaging with communities, is really an important thing.

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We're the only ones who can do this kind of work.

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But I also see a rising opportunity for the industry at large, as I also see this becoming a product, a product of fire engineering that could be served to different stakeholders like communities, regional, municipal administration, etc., which want to invest in their safety assessments and improve the safety of their citizens through uh science engineering based uh decision making processes uh powered by a very difficult and challenging analysis.

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Therefore, I I try to build up a lineup of talks in the podcast that uh together kind of carve the way towards practical use of fire safety engineering as a framework in the world of wildfires.

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And of course, uh I'm just a podcaster, I'm not researching this, there are brilliant people who research this uh worldwide, and I was super happy when I saw a keynote at Ljubljana conference earlier this year by Dr.

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Pascale Vacca from University Politechnica Catalunia UPC, and Pascal did show exactly this.

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She shown a workable framework on how wildfire engineering could be performed.

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UPC is known for industrial fire safety, so Pascale seems obviously inspired by risk and approaches coming from the industrial sector, from chemical engineering, etc.

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So it it truly is a workable framework.

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And in this podcast episode, I ask her some deep deeper questions about how this framework looks like, how it can be applied, what are the challenges, what are the missing links, and uh what actually is the role of fire safety engineers at different stages of executing this.

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So, uh, while fire engineering is a future, it is a part of our profession already and will be an increasingly large part of our profession in the future.

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I think we all need to be aware how this works and how can we do it the best.

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So let's learn from those who are actually doing it.

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

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Welcome to the Fireside Show.

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My name Wojciech Wegrzynski , and I will be your host.

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Hello everybody.

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I am joined today by Pascale Vacca from University Politecnica Catalonia.

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Hey Pascale, good to have you in the podcast.

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Hi, thank you so much for inviting me.

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And thank you.

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Thank you for coming to the Fire Science Show.

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I've really enjoyed your keynote in the recent conference in um Ljubljana.

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So that was very nice, and immediately I invited you for this.

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You took the invite, so here we are.

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So let's try to give a deeper dive into the keynote topic, which was integrating wild fire urban interface, fire risk management into the fire safety engineering practice, challenges and opportunities.

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I'm not sure if I want to start with challenges or opportunities.

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That's a tough choice.

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But maybe maybe the first question to ask is why do you think we need to integrate fire risk management into fire safety engineering practice?

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Perhaps let's start there.

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So, with all the events that we are seeing, you know, every summer and also in winter, as we've seen in LA, I believe that fire safety engineers can greatly contribute in basically reducing risk and reducing the consequences of wildfires when they reach urban communities.

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So that's I think that's it's a great opportunity for fire safety engineers to contribute to the to the problem.

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Do you think I I many times I've said in the podcast that I see this being a real job eventually?

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Like I even had people already emailing me, voice like I am already a wildfire uh engineer.

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Uh but do you think the wild the fire engineers could contribute at all parts of the process?

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How big the contributions could be?

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Yeah, so when we talk about uh the WUI fire issue, so the Warner Nurban Interface fire issue, we talk about different scales.

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So we have the landscape scale, that's the biggest scale, and then we can go down to the community scale, and then even smaller to the homeowner level.

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So when it comes to the landscape scale, this is where fire safety engineering would say has less of uh input because here it's where forest engineers are the experts.

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Um, but we can greatly contribute at the community scale and at the parcel scale.

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This is where buildings are located, this is where we can look at evacuation.

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Uh so this is kind of where uh our expertise would be really useful because we we're experts, of course, in a fire uh inside a building or in an industrial facility, but we can translate this expertise to you know what happens if the fire is coming from the outside and it's reaching the building.

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I share your opinion here.

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I think this though, I still uh see uh you know with the forest scale, with uh the developments like Winity and you know the tools that the colleagues around the world are building to uh manage like large-scale evacuations and fires, but I think there's still uh perhaps some preparedness work to be done.

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But I did indeed we can shine in the community scale.

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Um, you being in UPC, I know UPC always has been a place for industrial fire safety, you know, and it's it's made its name uh in this industrial fire safety is risk management.

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And uh I also see risk management in your approach.

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So are those two things connected?

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Are you like following the ideas of industrial uh risk management in in this space?

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Yeah, exactly.

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You're right.

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The the group Intertech is uh let's say most known for industrial fire safety, industrial risk.

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We also worked, I think now there's about 20 years of experience in wildfires.

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Um they started looking at fire retardants because we were in the chemical engineering department, so you know then you there's some penciling there.

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And then we move down to actually looking at risk.

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So when we talk about the wildfire that's reaching the woo, we also use a risk, let's say risk assessment approach.

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Uh we look at what's the hazard, you know, are you located in a hazardous area?

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Uh yes or no, what's the exposure, for example, that the community or reparsel is going to have when it comes to the wildfire, and then we look at the vulnerability of the community or of the building if we look at the smaller scale.

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So we still have this uh, let's say we still look at risk as a whole, so including all its uh parts.

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In the paper that you sent me, uh there's a formal way of doing this called the disaster risk management cycle, which covers the phases of risk assessment planning and and all the stages.

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I'll I'll briefly read through the phases and then we'll go in-depth into them because I really enjoyed that the fact that it's a framework, you know, it's it's not just uh a bunch of thoughts that uh it would be better if we did we did something with the problem.

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No, it's it's it's a it's a workable framework.

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And also um for those who were not in Ljubljana, Pascal has presented a full case study, applying a lot of what is being said in here to a specific uh part in uh uphill Barcelona.

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So we will not only cover the the theory, but we'll also try to discuss the case study, I hope.

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We can right.

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Okay, so let me let me just quickly read the the phases of disaster risk management cycle DRM.

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Assessment, risk management planning, risk prevention, emergency preparedness, emergency response, and recovery.

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How about we try and tackle them one by one?

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So, how do you see this integration of we risk management into fire safety engineering practice in the assessment stage?

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Like what is the stage and what engineers could do in it?

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Yeah, I think so.

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Risk assessment, I think this is what we are most comfortable with as fire safety engineers.

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We are used to do fire risk assessment when it comes to events, fire events inside buildings, so we can translate this to when a fire is coming from the outside.

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So basically, here is where we look at all the all the different components of risk.

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Um, so again, we look at the hazard, we look at the exposure, we look at the vulnerability.

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And this, the assessment, the typology of the assessment will depend on the scale that you're looking at.

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If you're looking at the community, you might want to look at different criteria and for different indicators compared to when you are looking at the parsley level.

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So, for the community, for example, uh, when it comes to the exposure, we might look at how the fire can percolate, can spread through the community, reaching the entire community, so not just the what the part that's facing the wineland.

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And this has also several components with, for example, uh the topography will help uh spreading the fire, the amount of vegetation or amount of fuels that inside the community uh can help spreading the fire.

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So at the community level, we might look at things more in general of the community.

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If we we might also, for example, include the construction materials of the most of the homes inside the community.

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It's not the same if we have a situation such as in what happened in LA or in Hawaii, where we had most of the houses made out of timber.

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So this also helps the fire spreading through the community.

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And it's different if we are, for example, here in Mediterranean Europe, where buildings are made out of concrete.

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So they're not gonna burn as much.

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Um, so we can look at these criteria, and then at the at the smaller scale, so the parcel level, uh, we can really look in detail at what are the vulnerabilities of a building.

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There's a lot of work that's been done already to identify which are the most vulnerable elements of a building to a fire that's coming from the outside, and then we can actually assess um what my case study did, what I did in the case study is that I assessed um the vulnerability of the building using a performance-based design approach.

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So I set some performance criteria, I had the fire spreading towards the building, and then I had a look at how the building is gonna react to the fire.

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We can actually touch a little more on that because it was an interesting case of modeling.

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So, from what I remember in the in the keynote, you've run uh FDS simulations for fire spread outside of the building and some fire approaching a building, and then uh you were investigating a facade, like a glazed facade, if I recall.

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Uh so maybe maybe give us some more detail about how you've used the fire engineering tool set in in this problem.

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Because like for me, I would simulate the building and see what's happening outside, you know, and you reverse the problem.

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Yeah, so the issue came because the area of uh Barcelona that's uh located at the WUI is quite a problematic area.

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So the firefighters came to us uh because they uh wanted to know whether they could use our civic senator, it's called basically a community senator of a neighborhood, if they could use it as a community shelter in case of a wildfire, because they knew that the situation of the homes located in the neighborhood was not really great when it comes to preparedness.

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So this was a real problem that we had.

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And so we decided to approach the issue first simulating a wildfire approaching the buildings because we wanted to know okay, what's the intensity of the wildfire that's gonna arrive at the building?

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We kind of took a worst case uh scenario and we ran a faresight simulation to know what would be the fairline intensity, what would be the rate of spread close to the building.

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And then once we have this information, this is our input for our FDS simulation.

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So this is we need some wildfire inputs to place in FDS.

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We don't have uh in when we do performance-based design for buildings, there are some PBD codes and guidelines that tell us, okay, with this type of uh occupancy, you have such heat release rate per unit area.

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And the fire is gonna be this big.

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We are not there yet when it comes to away fires.

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So this is how we did it.

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We needed some fire inputs with the outputs from Farsight to then input in FTS.

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And then we simulated a fire approaching with the rate of spread uh that far sight send, with the intensity that faresight send, and we could see it approach the building.

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Of course, you you also have to put the meteorological conditions in there, so the wind is really important because it's gonna push the flames towards a certain direction, depending on where the wind is coming from.

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Uh, and and this building had a very big glass facade just facing the wild end.

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Um, so we thought, okay, we know the light blazing facades are vulnerable to fire.

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Um, so we wanted to specifically simulate this because it was the most vulnerable element of the building.

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And then through the FDS simulation, you know what's the heat flux that's reaching the glass, what's the glass temperature, a surface temperature, and then you set some performance criteria, and then you see whether uh the situation.

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What we did was analyze the situation as it was, so see whether the building would resist the passing of a wildfire or no.

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And in our case, the result was that that the glazing would break.

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So we need to put some protection or we need to identify some mitigation strategies so that uh the glazing will not break.

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Yeah, but that's for the further phases.

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We'll come back to this.

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Uh we need to clarify what's far sight and how does one use that?

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Uh yeah.

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Okay, far sight is a wildfire spread model.

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Okay.

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It's a semi-empirical model.

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So it uses rotor mill to identify how the fire is gonna spread.

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Uh, you set an ignition point, you have to know the topography of the landscape, you set the meteorological conditions, and then with this, and and of course, very important, you need to have a fuel map uh so that we actually know what's burning, what's the vegetation uh that's burning, and then you can get lots of outputs from the simulation.

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Um, you can get arrival times, you can get rate of spread, fire line intensity.

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And the one that you can translate into something usable by FDS is which one?

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The intensity?

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The fire line intensity?

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Yeah, so what you can do is the um that there's also an empirical equation to calculate the flame depth.

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This is basically how deep the the flame of the firefront is.

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Um the fine line intensity is in kilowatt per meter.

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Okay, and then you divide by the flame depth.

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This is one of the one of the options.

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That's the interesting part, you know, because it's in principle it's only very uh logic and easy.

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You take one model, oh, it gives you an output, and then you put it into another model, and here you go.

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It's your normal everyday Far Safety engineering.

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But um, there are you know those conversions uh and the way how the models work is it's not one unified set of tools like you have to resort.

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And we could probably go deeper on Farsight uh with what's Rotoman model, how it has been developed, and how how does wind and fuel go into that, but that would be an entire podcast episode.

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So I'll probably uh stop with the details of the Farsight in here because I have other questions for the assessment process.

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Um, it's a risk assessment, so I wonder how the quantification of the probabilities look like, or or are like first of all, do you even care about ignition or you look only on the probability that something spreads in certain conditions?

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Because I have an intuitive feeling that ignition will be very, very difficult to quantify.

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Yeah, uh of course.

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So for us, we assume that ignition will happen.

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Yeah, um, luckily in Catalunya, so we are analyzing the specific cases in Catalonia, uh, the firefighters did a great job in collecting past uh fire perimeters, past ignitions, and they kind of identified for each small area of Catalonia the typology of fire that is most probable based on what happened in the past.

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So, for example, for the area that we analyzed, they identified two different types of fire that would happen most probably.

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One was is pushed by the wind and the topography, and the other one would be a prune-dominated fire.

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Okay.

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I mean, we are very lucky that this work was previously done.

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So we can use it as a base for certain areas.

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In other areas, it might be more difficult to have this information.

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So then you might go more on a deterministic base of like, okay, what's my main wind direction?

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So, based on that, what's gonna happen if I have an ignition in the worst case uh location based on the wind?

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Yeah, it's not easy if you if you have limited information.

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You can look at past fires, but uh I'm I don't know if each country is recording this, if it's publicly available or not.

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It may also be a case of a small sample size, like think think Nordic countries.

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I don't think they can base the future on uh the past fires, like I had Nieves in my podcast, and that was that was the biggest issue for them.

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Uh how about the fuel?

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Because one, I assume you need to understand what biologically is there, like is it trees, bushes, what kinds of them?

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But also I think it's important for you what state they are.

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Like, are they dried?

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Are they alive?

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Like in Poland, they would go through seasons, so that probably also is this something you account for?

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Uh yeah, so when you look at the information that's available, so you have the the fuel map, and of course, this has different resolution depending on where your information is coming from.

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So this also impacts your results.

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Of course, it's it's better to have a finer resolution because then you can really go at a smaller scale, specifically when it comes to our work.

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Maybe at the landscape scale, it's not as important, but when you look at the community level, it's really important to have at the smaller scale as like up to a single tree scale, like no, no.

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For example, I would say we uh in Catalonia we have 20 meters by 20 meter.

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Uh, I think that's uh that looks like fine enough because then you can really distinguish what's the urban area.

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So what's in the according to the fuel map is not gonna burn.

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Then we can talk about this because this will also burn.

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Uh what is urban area, and then you can really distinguish what is agricultural uh fields, uh, what is the wildland, and then you have, of course, the distinction you have shrubs, you have forest.

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And you also have information on the bulk density of each technology and on the moisture content as well.

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So this is where where we uh look at the conditions of the vegetation.

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Uh we can have you know very low moisture for the dead fuels, and then uh we can have live trees as well.

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One of the issues of these fuel maps, however, is that they are not up to date.

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So sometimes the fuel map is telling you, for such as in the case study that we did, the fuel map is telling you that you have shrubland, and when you actually go there and look at the vegetation, you see pine trees as well.

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So the the that is not updated, and also on the other side, the fuel that is selected, for example, in Farside is the one that's gonna be carrying the fire.

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So if you have different typologies, you actually are using the one that's gonna be carrying the fire.

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So in our example, it was shrubland because it's the shrubs that are gonna be carrying the fire mostly.

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As we're talking about the opportunities for fire safety engineers, I would like maybe I'm naive, but perhaps like a fire engineer could also do the survey themselves, like take a drone, fly around the area and just map it.

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In if 20 by 20 is your grid that that's sufficient for you.

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I think that's that's quite a manage, like at a community center scale, like you were presenting in in uh UPC.

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I mean, that that's a scale of a part of the terrain and the building which you're comfortably modeling with FDS.

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So uh for any fire safety engineer uh listening, like it's it's it's not really huge, it's like few hundred by few hundred meters that's manageable.

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Could imagine like just going there with a drone and uh and you know mapping it for yourself.

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Yeah, actually we did this in a in a project uh several years ago.

00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:39.759
So we had a drone to and basically we had like a 3D with the through the drone, we had a 3D uh image of the area that we wanted to analyze, and then we specifically know okay, the vegetation is located here, uh, and then we could translate this to basically FDS obstacles, you know.

00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:53.359
Uh this was done, it was like I'm not expert at that voxelization of uh, and then this was really easily imported into pyrocene, and then we had obstacles for FDS.

00:22:53.359 --> 00:23:05.920
Of course, this is a big difference because when you are looking at uh fire spreading through the vegetation, like you don't really care about, let's say, the 3D shape of the vegetation.

00:23:05.920 --> 00:23:16.079
You know, the forest is gonna spread mainly on at the surface, so and then it's of course it's gonna catch, you know, if you have a shrub that's close to the surface, it's gonna catch this.

00:23:16.079 --> 00:23:24.319
Uh, but at the moment we are simulating in FDS, we are simulating the vegetation just as a vent, uh like a burner, like typical.

00:23:24.319 --> 00:23:25.200
Yeah, exactly.

00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:27.039
As a burner, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:23:27.039 --> 00:23:28.960
On the 3D on the drone.

00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:35.519
This was uh uh we use this to uh then create virtual reality experiences.

00:23:35.519 --> 00:23:56.640
Uh so this is something that when it comes to the prevention and preparedness side is really interesting because then you can place the people inside their neighborhood or inside on their parcel, and you can have a fire starting, and they can see actually how the fire will spread towards the community or towards their home.

00:23:56.640 --> 00:24:00.319
So this is something that we did with uh David Caballero.

00:24:00.319 --> 00:24:04.240
He's uh an expert on way fires in Spain.

00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:09.599
So yeah, this is also something really interesting where engineers can contribute for sure.

00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:10.160
Wow.

00:24:10.160 --> 00:24:31.599
Well, uh it's it's great to discover that that like those uh ideas and concepts are turning into like uh research and then into tools because it means that this will propagate, and in some years this this will really be uh something that a single engineer, like single fire engineer, like you're delivering a fire strategy to a building today, like you could actually do that study.

00:24:31.599 --> 00:24:37.599
And I I wouldn't mind flying to um to Spain and fly a drone and do some modeling in field.

00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:41.519
Uh that that doesn't sound like a bad job to me.

00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:44.960
If you if it is if it could uh support living.

00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:53.680
Um one more um so so in in this uh set of boundary conditions, I also have weather on my list.

00:24:53.680 --> 00:24:56.799
So so how weather is quantified?

00:24:56.799 --> 00:25:04.400
Like one, do you care about like do you care about the range of probable wins or you just care about the worst ones?

00:25:04.400 --> 00:25:08.559
And how do you quantify which one is the worst, actually?

00:25:08.880 --> 00:25:21.359
Yeah, um, well, this depends on on what the focus of your analysis is because one thing is okay, I want to know whether a building can survive a worst case fire scenario.

00:25:21.359 --> 00:25:31.759
Then you go for the highest wind gusts in uh that happened in uh in a certain day, highest temperatures, lowest moisture, moisture content.

00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:36.079
So it really depends on what uh what the objective of the study is.

00:25:36.079 --> 00:25:40.000
If you want to analyze a worst case scenario, then go for the extreme, you know.

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:56.319
If if you want to analyze okay, what's gonna happen in my average wildfire day, then you what we did is we looked at a meteor situation in a past wildfire that was uh I think I believe it was one in 2015.

00:25:56.319 --> 00:26:10.240
Uh um this was uh a couple of days for Catalunya where it was they had several uh fires, and so we thought this would be a representative day for for uh you know a wildfire event.

00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:20.000
So um yeah, depending on on the objective, depending on what you want to look at, then you you choose uh different meteorological scenarios.

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:31.599
And also again, you might want to look at the probability of this fire, you know, it might be a worst case fire scenario, but actually it's an unlikely wind direction for the area.

00:26:31.599 --> 00:26:44.720
So you also need to look at that what's the most likely wind direction, uh, what's gonna happen on a day where I have, you know, my typical uh meteorological conditions for the area, or look at the worst case.

00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:51.519
Yeah, like you said before, you you were supported by your firefighters who already identified the plausible scenarios for you.

00:26:51.519 --> 00:26:55.680
So I guess those were also connected with the wind direction to some extent.

00:26:55.680 --> 00:27:04.559
So it and and you had data from previous fires that occurred, which probably followed those uh those typologies of fires uh identified by firefighters.

00:27:04.559 --> 00:27:07.920
So that's a a great side of references to start with.

00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:14.480
And I can also imagine someone being in a completely blind like this is a village in the middle of uh of a of a country.

00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:19.279
Please tell me like what are the what's the the fire risk management I should do.

00:27:19.279 --> 00:27:29.359
And in that case, I guess you probably would lean towards like a complete parametric study of of different winds and different ignition locations in different fuels and different weathers.

00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:31.359
But I think FarSight supports that, right?

00:27:31.359 --> 00:27:33.920
You can do uh probabilistic in Farsight.

00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:34.640
Yeah, yeah.

00:27:34.640 --> 00:27:40.960
And also Farsight, the the let's say the good thing about Farsight is that simulation run really fast.

00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:41.599
Okay.

00:27:41.839 --> 00:27:47.039
So in in a time of I don't know, minutes, you have your results already.

00:27:47.039 --> 00:28:03.680
So it's not like FDS where you you know a model that then such as one that we run took I think it took close to two weeks to so because once you put a wind in FDS, it slows down everything, you know, because the competition is a very important thing.

00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:06.240
And you also need uh and you need a large domain, yeah.

00:28:06.640 --> 00:28:07.759
Yeah, exactly.

00:28:07.759 --> 00:28:20.079
Um, so the good thing about fire site is you can run lots of simulations uh very quickly, so then you can have an idea of uh, you know, how's the fire gonna spread if I put my ignition point over here?

00:28:20.079 --> 00:28:23.279
What about my if my ignition point is somewhere else?

00:28:23.279 --> 00:28:25.440
So yeah, this is why it's great.

00:28:25.440 --> 00:28:37.599
Of course, it has its limitations, but also I always say like we you know, you know, we have to work with what we have at the moment because if we say uh okay, I mean, uh it's not realistic, we cannot use it.

00:28:37.599 --> 00:28:40.960
Uh engineers still need tools to work with.

00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:43.839
So at the moment, this is what we have.

00:28:43.839 --> 00:28:49.839
Uh it's a better than nothing, and so we we should use it, we should take advantage of it.

00:28:50.160 --> 00:28:53.440
Yeah, okay, let's go back to the disaster risk management cycle.

00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:56.480
Uh, assessment you said is the closest to fire safety engineers.

00:28:56.480 --> 00:29:09.039
So, as uh as we're fire safety engineers, uh we spend a good chunk of time uh talking about it, but there are uh more phases: risk management planning, risk prevention, emergency prep, uh emergency response and recovery.

00:29:09.039 --> 00:29:11.440
So let's try risk management planning.

00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:18.240
So you've done your fire safety engineering assessment, are you still needed in the project as fire safety engineer?

00:29:18.640 --> 00:29:30.079
You are, you are, because this is the phase when you've done your risk assessment, you know what the outcomes are, and then uh this is the in the management phase, this is where you propose solutions.

00:29:30.079 --> 00:29:49.680
So you can propose solutions, for example, when it comes to hardening structures, when you look at the parcel level and you look at a structure specifically, you can pinpoint what are you know you've pinpointed before what are the vulnerabilities of the building, and you can try mitigating these vulnerabilities.

00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:59.759
Of course, it's different providing solutions in the sense, especially when we talk about the homeowner, in the sense of like you have to change your entire roof structure because it's uh you.

00:29:59.759 --> 00:30:00.799
Horrible.

00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:03.759
This is something that might not be feasible for the homeowner.

00:30:03.759 --> 00:30:12.319
So then you also have to think what are actions that are feasible for the homeowner to implement to reduce vulnerability.

00:30:12.319 --> 00:30:25.119
And then if it comes at the for the community level, mitigation strategies could be implementing a fuel break or increasing the size of a fuel break or create fire breaks.

00:30:25.119 --> 00:30:30.960
So when I talk about fire breaks, this means this is an area where there is zero vegetation.

00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:37.759
Okay, so you create uh basically an empty space so that the fire cannot spread through that space.

00:30:37.759 --> 00:30:58.160
And when we talk about a fuel break, it's an area where there is vegetation, but the vegetation has been reduced so that the fire basically the idea is that the fire would lose intensity through the fuel break, so that when it reaches the community, the fire has already a much lower intensity so that firefighters can act.

00:30:58.160 --> 00:31:00.319
So this could be some strategies.

00:31:00.319 --> 00:31:11.440
And here, when when it comes about the fuel treatment, of course, here is where we would need help from other professionals because um we have not experts for sure in fuel treatments.

00:31:11.440 --> 00:31:17.599
Uh so this is where um the interdisciplinarity of the problem shows up.

00:31:17.599 --> 00:31:19.920
And uh so we need to work on this.

00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:29.119
And when we talk about vulnerability, uh especially at community level, we might also want to analyze social vulnerability of the community.

00:31:29.119 --> 00:31:33.599
So then we will need help of social scientists as well.

00:31:33.599 --> 00:31:46.160
Um, so this is the phase where we are proposing solutions where we also have to think outs a bit outside the box and also involve other professionals, other experts in uh in several fields.

00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:52.960
So in in your case study, you've identified there is a potential issue with the fire coming to that community center.

00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:54.400
That was your assessment phase.

00:31:54.400 --> 00:31:57.759
How did you respond to that in the management phase of the cycle?

00:31:58.079 --> 00:32:06.240
Um so we saw that the glazing system in a worst case scenario would not be able to resist to the fire, tracking would happen.

00:32:06.240 --> 00:32:13.920
Um so one of the things that can be easily implemented is to place shutters in front of the system.

00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:22.240
Uh, this is a solution that we've seen very often, and it's kind of a simple solution, and it's very effective.

00:32:22.240 --> 00:32:24.559
Um, the glazing is well protected.

00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:27.119
Of course, it depends on the material of the shutters.

00:32:27.119 --> 00:32:36.640
You don't want to place uh PVC or plastic materials because that's gonna melt and then it's gonna also gonna burn and contribute to the fire.

00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:42.880
That's why you need a fire safety engineer there, not uh not someone who has no idea what they're doing.

00:32:43.279 --> 00:32:44.319
Exactly, exactly.

00:32:44.319 --> 00:32:47.839
You need to know also the what material you have to put.

00:32:47.839 --> 00:32:54.880
So, for example, aluminium we've seen is a great material, of course, fire-rated shutters, and you have the top.

00:32:54.880 --> 00:33:03.200
Uh, so these are kind of simple actions that you can do to harden the structure and to reduce vulnerability in that sense.

00:33:03.200 --> 00:33:15.599
Then on the other side, if we look at the the fuels surrounding the buildings, this is also where we can have a look at, you know, okay, what can we do so that the fire actually doesn't reach the building?

00:33:15.599 --> 00:33:25.759
In the case study, there was a fire break of seven meters, so there was no vegetation for seven meters in front of the facade, and we saw that this was not enough.

00:33:25.759 --> 00:33:36.640
So we might want to also suggest to increase this fire rig so that the vegetation the wine vegetation is located further from the building.

00:33:36.640 --> 00:33:48.559
Or we might want to suggest a fuel treatment so that they actually have a fire break first and then a fuel brick so that we would reduce the intensity of the fire breaching the building.

00:33:48.559 --> 00:33:51.039
So there are similar options there.

00:33:51.039 --> 00:33:56.240
Some things are you know, placing shutters, okay, that's you know an easy solution.

00:33:56.240 --> 00:34:07.200
Uh when it comes to the fuel treatment, then we will need more analysis for sure to see up to what distance do I need the fuel treatment, uh, up to what distance do I need the fire break?

00:34:07.200 --> 00:34:10.639
And here again, it's the interdisciplinarity of the issue.

00:34:10.639 --> 00:34:16.639
Uh, it's not just the fire engineer that can provide a solution when it comes to the fuel treatment.

00:34:17.119 --> 00:34:19.519
Okay, so that's what that was risk management planning.

00:34:19.519 --> 00:34:27.119
You're needed to to to plan uh the the solutions, and now from planning we move to risk prevention, I guess.

00:34:27.119 --> 00:34:28.800
This is when you execute the plan.

00:34:29.280 --> 00:34:29.840
Exactly.

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:30.719
Yeah, yeah.

00:34:30.800 --> 00:34:32.880
So this is where the execution happens.

00:34:32.880 --> 00:34:37.440
So uh, I mean, here we can the fighter engineer, of course, can still follow.

00:34:37.440 --> 00:34:49.360
You know, it's kind of like when you when you are you've designed the uh a smoking heat control system of the building, you you give the project, you give your design, and then you see it actually implemented on site.

00:34:49.679 --> 00:34:53.039
Well, it is it sounds like a side inspection part of the building project.

00:34:53.039 --> 00:35:08.559
But I but I assume it's also like I think this is the part where you would try to communicate the plan to other stakeholders because I assume you work with a specific group of people who are, I don't know, the safety officer of a community.

00:35:08.559 --> 00:35:15.679
Uh that's the person you probably work at up to this point because they're paying for your work and they're paying you to to do the plan.

00:35:15.679 --> 00:35:30.480
And now the plan turns into an actionable item, and suddenly a lot of other people are involved in the in the project right now because there's people who have to execute, people who have to uh you know discuss it with with the with the community, people who have to plan logistics, etc.

00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:40.800
So I assume uh the role is actually a lot in discussing with those stakeholders on how their actions might impact the execution and and getting the plan right.

00:35:41.199 --> 00:35:45.519
Yeah, ideally, you want your stakeholders to be involved from day one.

00:35:45.519 --> 00:35:47.440
Okay, so when it comes to risk.

00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:49.119
We're not in the ideal world.

00:35:49.599 --> 00:35:50.480
Ideally, yeah.

00:35:50.480 --> 00:36:06.159
But for example, the for us, the firefighters, this is something that they are really useful when it comes to the risk assessment phase because they can actually they've been on the field, they know, so they can give great inputs on your inputs of your risk assessment.

00:36:06.159 --> 00:36:12.000
So ideally, you I would say firefighters are key stakeholder in this case.

00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:28.000
Um, so you would want them on board uh from day one to check whether they think that you're what you're doing is is actually you know what what they see as risk, what they see as a hazard, what they see as the vulnerability in the area.

00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:33.599
Um because they might have also other scenarios in mind that you did not think about, you know.

00:36:33.599 --> 00:36:36.559
So this is something that's uh important.

00:36:36.559 --> 00:36:49.360
And then yes, when it comes to the execution of the actions uh that you, the mitigation actions that you've identified, uh then yes, then it depends again on the type on the building.

00:36:49.360 --> 00:36:56.639
So if you if it's a private home, then of course it's the homeowner who, you know, it has to be feasible for them.

00:36:56.639 --> 00:37:04.239
If it's a community center, as our case study, then it's the municipality uh that's involved in there.

00:37:04.239 --> 00:37:08.800
So you need to talk with the municipalities to see what is feasible for them to do.

00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:14.719
Because, for example, they can provide the fuel treatments around the building.

00:37:14.719 --> 00:37:26.000
And since the building is is a public building, they might also have to look for the funding to place the shutters in front of the lating system.

00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:28.800
So, yeah, it depends on what you're looking at.

00:37:28.800 --> 00:37:38.159
Usually I would say this type of assessments, they're not done for the private person, they're done more for uh public buildings or public entities.

00:37:38.159 --> 00:37:43.440
So this is when there you have to see what is feasible for them to execute.

00:37:43.920 --> 00:38:05.119
I can only speculate, but I think you know, from the business perspective as in to whom an engineer would be giving those services, I think the community is a good stakeholder to work with because uh the costs are then like within the budgets of communities, like they can handle quite large costs for those assessments.

00:38:05.119 --> 00:38:23.599
If they decide they want to invest in safety, and and uh speaking from Polish experience and seeing like the amounts of funds that are going to uh warp partners and shelters and and stuff like that, not to wildfires, but uh to our uh little uh annoying neighbors.

00:38:23.599 --> 00:38:30.000
That's a lot of money going through the design world right now.

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:32.880
A lot, like unbelievable amount of money from our perspective.

00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:36.079
So I can see why community would be a good partner.

00:38:36.079 --> 00:38:42.480
If you think about the single homeowner, I think it would be perhaps more connected with insurance, maybe.

00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:43.679
I could see that.

00:38:43.679 --> 00:38:54.079
Like I'm not sure to what extent it's true, but I I've heard that uh in California it's very difficult to insure your property because of the wildfire risk.

00:38:54.079 --> 00:39:08.880
So if that is the case, I can imagine some sort of framework emerging where the insurance is after some sort of uh risk assessment and management plan and implementing that plan.

00:39:08.880 --> 00:39:10.559
I that would make sense to me.

00:39:10.639 --> 00:39:21.360
Like, yeah, in Europe we we have not seen yet insurance being a stakeholder in in this problem, they have not yet participated in this.

00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:27.519
I think in the next years they will have to they will have to participate in this problem.

00:39:27.519 --> 00:39:37.199
Uh and actually I think insurance might play a very big role when it comes to preparedness and prevention of the homeowner.

00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:48.079
Because they can say, like, okay, if your home doesn't respect these characteristics, I cannot insure you, or uh your insurance fee is gonna be really high.

00:39:48.079 --> 00:39:55.199
If you implement some vulnerability reduction strategies, then I can lower your fee.

00:39:55.199 --> 00:40:02.719
Um, so I think they have a big role to play in here when it comes to preparedness and prevention.

00:40:02.719 --> 00:40:06.000
But in Europe, we have not seen that yet.

00:40:06.320 --> 00:40:16.880
Yeah, I mean, and for fire engineers' perspective, I think this is important because it's very unlikely that the insurance person will do the assessment on their own.

00:40:16.880 --> 00:40:30.719
Like in this case, I think they would have to uh really use some third-party fire engineering principle with competencies, like uh uh, etc., to believe that this assessment is done well.

00:40:30.719 --> 00:40:37.440
Like when you insure a house, there's a assessor that assesses the value of the house in in such a way.

00:40:37.440 --> 00:40:48.800
Well, that is just like we could probably go go much deeper on this, but this is an interesting feature and and the context of of why your keynote is important because that truly is the future of fire safety engineers.

00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:54.320
Um, in this in in this, you use two keywords, risk prevention and risk mitigation.

00:40:54.320 --> 00:40:56.639
Is there a distinct difference between them?

00:40:56.639 --> 00:41:00.159
Is it is it important, or is it just two words that are used for the same thing?

00:41:00.559 --> 00:41:02.639
No, I think that there's a difference in there.

00:41:02.639 --> 00:41:19.360
So risk mitigation strategies are those that you implement when you know uh when you've done your risk assessment, uh, and you know, okay, these are my vulnerabilities, uh, and this is what I can do to uh to reduce uh the risk in general.

00:41:19.360 --> 00:41:34.719
But mainly when we talk about a risk at the Wii, I think we can mostly work on reducing vulnerability because the hazards are gonna be there because if you're in a wildfire prone area, you know, there's gonna be wildfires.

00:41:34.719 --> 00:41:44.000
You can touch a little bit on exposure, but then you know, there's still gonna be the fire's still gonna be reaching in some ways.

00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:46.239
Uh it's gonna be reaching the community.

00:41:46.239 --> 00:41:52.719
So I think vulnerability is is where we can do the most work to reduce then the risk.

00:41:52.719 --> 00:42:10.079
And um when it comes to preparedness, this is more like these are actions that you do every day to um make sure that when the fire is arriving, you are not vulnerable to the fire or not as vulnerable as you should be.

00:42:10.079 --> 00:42:17.760
Um I have done actions that can help reduce vulnerability, but I have done them.

00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:29.840
So it's not that I, you know, in the management, I've identified the action and in the preparedness, it's I've maintained for a long time this action because of course things are changing constantly.

00:42:29.840 --> 00:42:35.519
The vegetation is growing again, the fuels that I have around my building are changing constantly.

00:42:35.519 --> 00:42:47.760
If I don't maintain them, then it's gonna be so preparedness, it's more for me about like constantly maintaining this this faith so that once the event happens, I am prepared for it.

00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:51.360
I've done all that I can to reduce the risk.

00:42:52.159 --> 00:42:57.599
And in this in this preparedness stage, is do you see a lot of work for fire safety engineering?

00:42:57.599 --> 00:43:01.679
I I think this is the part where spreading the knowledge is the thing, education.

00:43:01.760 --> 00:43:10.800
I don't know, like yeah, so this is where basically we, as you said, we we go out to the world and spread the information.

00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:14.880
In the US and in Canada, there are great examples of this.

00:43:14.880 --> 00:43:30.719
We have what is called a preparedness day, it's once a year, and they get the community gets together, they learn about risk of wildfires, they learn about the vulnerabilities of their community, and they work together to reduce uh the vulnerabilities.

00:43:30.719 --> 00:43:35.440
So I think this is where the fire engineer comes here as an expert.

00:43:35.440 --> 00:43:42.159
Okay, so they talk with the community as an expert to show, okay, these are the actions that you can do.

00:43:42.159 --> 00:43:52.320
I've analyzed this in a scientific way, in an engineering way, so I can tell you which actions will be effective specifically for your case.

00:43:52.320 --> 00:43:56.000
This is also something that's really important when we talk to a community.

00:43:56.000 --> 00:44:02.159
It's really important to be very specific with the characteristics of the community.

00:44:02.159 --> 00:44:08.159
We've had several meetings with communities here located at the WI here in Spain.

00:44:08.159 --> 00:44:17.199
And what we've seen is that they already know, because here, of course, uh there's a little bit of risk awareness already when it comes to the population.

00:44:17.199 --> 00:44:19.599
Not very much, but a little bit.

00:44:19.599 --> 00:44:27.119
Uh so they already know a bit the general spiel of, you know, uh, okay, we're in a wildfire prone area.

00:44:27.119 --> 00:44:33.920
Uh, you know, if uh the firefighters tell you to stay inside, you should stay inside, you should not evacuate.

00:44:33.920 --> 00:44:44.000
But what they actually want to know is, okay, for my community specifically, for the characteristics of my community, the fuels that I have around, what should I do?

00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:50.480
So this is really, really important to then address, address the issue community per community.

00:44:50.800 --> 00:44:58.079
In case of the community you were investigating as your case study, did you did you have the chance to reach this phase and to work with the community?

00:44:58.320 --> 00:45:04.239
Yeah, so we are working with three different communities through the Fire Prime project.

00:45:04.239 --> 00:45:12.480
Uh, this is a project that's funded by the DG ECOS, the European uh Union uh civil protection mechanism.

00:45:12.480 --> 00:45:15.679
And so in this project, we really focus on preparedness.

00:45:15.679 --> 00:45:27.360
So we had a first preparedness day as well with these three communities, and the first one was a bit more general, and the feedback that we got was exactly this.

00:45:27.360 --> 00:45:32.239
They said, okay, we really want to know what uh with our community, what's gonna happen.

00:45:32.239 --> 00:45:41.920
So then we're gonna have a second one actually in two weeks, and the plan is to divide the uh people between the three communities.

00:45:41.920 --> 00:45:54.159
So we will have, let's say, one table per community, we'll put a map on the table and we actually analyze okay, what's gonna happen in case of a wildfire when it approaches your community?

00:45:54.159 --> 00:45:58.159
So we have had really great feedback from the community.

00:45:58.159 --> 00:46:09.679
We also uh we are in the phase of developing an app, a phone app, uh, for the homeowner to be aware of the risk at his parcel.

00:46:09.679 --> 00:46:30.000
So we ask several questions about the state of the building, about the building materials, about the state of the surroundings, and then the homeowner gets a score for vulnerability of its time for the hazard, which is based, um, this is based on the on the danger map.

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.320
And then we multiply vulnerability with the hazard to get the risk.

00:46:34.320 --> 00:46:48.079
So the homeowner gets a score of risk for his house, and then he gets suggestions on how to reduce on this part on how to reduce the vulnerability because of course, about the hazard, it's on a map, you cannot do much about that.

00:46:48.079 --> 00:46:54.079
And we also got great feedback from the uh people that we worked with on the app.

00:46:54.079 --> 00:47:04.239
Uh so we're really honestly we're we're really happy uh when uh we collaborate with the communities and when they are actually uh really willing to collaborate with us.

00:47:04.639 --> 00:47:08.480
It's encouraging, but I think they they must consider you as allies.

00:47:08.480 --> 00:47:15.599
Like you're not uh like you know, when I when I'm a fire safety engineer and I go to construction site, oh boy, I'm not an ally.

00:47:15.599 --> 00:47:21.840
Like I'm the I am the most annoying person in the in the construction yard, and everyone hates me.

00:47:21.840 --> 00:47:30.719
Like because I tell them things that they do not like, I tell I tell them things that everything's wrong and you have to fix it, and it costs money and time, and they hate me.

00:47:30.719 --> 00:47:40.000
But I think when you're when you when the product is the safety of community and the people you work with, they care to be be safe, they care that their children are safe.

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:51.760
And if you tell them you see your your your roof is kind of creating you an unsafe regime and this is why, I think they're they don't treat you as a hostile, telling you oh, your roof is wrong.

00:47:51.760 --> 00:47:59.920
You're someone giving them a helping hand, telling you know what, from all the things that could happen, the roof is probably the one that's gonna go wrong.

00:47:59.920 --> 00:48:02.639
I feel it's a different kind of dynamic.

00:48:02.639 --> 00:48:11.119
Perhaps if you come there with an insurance agent who wants to uh increase their premium, you're not gonna be that welcomed, but uh but I think working with community is nice.

00:48:11.119 --> 00:48:14.960
I I also think this is the the phase where it ends if there's no fire.

00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:19.280
Because uh with with this, if there's no fire, there's no response, there's no recovery.

00:48:19.280 --> 00:48:21.920
So eventually go back to assessment.

00:48:21.920 --> 00:48:25.119
How often those cycles should repeat, like reassessments?

00:48:25.119 --> 00:48:26.639
Three years, five years?

00:48:26.800 --> 00:48:28.960
Uh that's a great question.

00:48:28.960 --> 00:48:36.639
Uh honestly, in the context of climate change, I guess we would have to look at the assessment regularly.

00:48:36.639 --> 00:48:41.039
I don't know if five years, a five-year cycle is enough.

00:48:41.039 --> 00:48:44.239
Um, or we should do it every two years.

00:48:44.239 --> 00:48:53.920
This also depends on on what you know how how much things are changing in the landscape, how much things are being done.

00:48:53.920 --> 00:48:59.920
For example, if you have to implement the fuel break, you do it year one, then it's perfect.

00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:01.920
Okay, then you have a great fuel break.

00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:04.800
Year two, okay, you have some vegetation growing.

00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:20.320
Year five, you might have to, you know, if if no maintenance happened, then of course your risk assessment is not valid anymore because if you counted on this fuel break and it's not there anymore, then you know results have changed.

00:49:20.320 --> 00:49:24.719
So yeah, I mean, it's constantly a changing landscape.

00:49:24.719 --> 00:49:26.880
So we need to think about this.

00:49:26.880 --> 00:49:36.159
And also temperatures are going up every every year, temperatures are increasing, which means moisture level of the vegetation is going down.

00:49:36.159 --> 00:49:39.519
So yeah, this is not something that's done once and that's it.

00:49:40.320 --> 00:49:48.639
If we want this to become an engineering product and a service, I think this is an important aspect of that product to be well thought.

00:49:48.639 --> 00:49:55.599
Perhaps a fuel survey should be done every year, or reassessment of change should be done every year.

00:49:55.599 --> 00:50:05.599
And based on that, you can say, okay, you know what, there is a sufficient amount of change that you need to repeat uh the modeling parts, or you need to repeat the the far side simulation, whatever.

00:50:05.599 --> 00:50:18.239
There's a lot of work for us as people who are you know thinking the the frameworks for you to figure out that because I it if this becomes a product, it it needs to come with its information.

00:50:18.239 --> 00:50:25.280
Like you see, this is like it's not you're buying a one-time assessment for your uh uh hundred years of your village.

00:50:25.280 --> 00:50:29.039
It's it's like it's gonna change and and you have to readjust.

00:50:29.039 --> 00:50:34.719
In the response and recovery phases, like do we really have a lot of stuff to do?

00:50:34.719 --> 00:50:39.360
I in recovery, I guess yes, but uh in the response, how do you feel about that?

00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:50.559
Well, in response, this is uh I I don't know if we can do something like that's immediate in the sense okay, there's a fire, uh, I can help out on this.

00:50:50.559 --> 00:50:58.480
What we can do for the response part is more thinking ahead and looking at suppression options that we might have.

00:50:58.480 --> 00:51:02.480
I told you SETEC has a bit of history in looking at fire retardants.

00:51:02.480 --> 00:51:13.039
So this is where also we can participate in this, or looking at the suppression infrastructure, you know, do we have enough water points in the community or not?

00:51:13.039 --> 00:51:16.639
Where can, you know, where's the water going to be coming from?

00:51:16.639 --> 00:51:21.679
Um, we can support more in things like that.

00:51:21.679 --> 00:51:27.519
So support uh the the people that then are gonna go on the field to actually suppress the fire.

00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:35.199
Though arguably if you do a great job at assessment uh stage with your analysis, that this will be useful in the response.

00:51:35.519 --> 00:51:37.360
Yeah, for sure, for sure.

00:51:37.360 --> 00:52:00.800
And so if you do a great job in the assessment and then in setting litigation measurements, then uh you're really aiding the fire brigade in the sense that they are more um they're not as concerned with the community because they know that uh you know some actions have been have been done to reduce the vulnerability or the risk.

00:52:00.800 --> 00:52:11.039
Um so they can focus a bit more on actually going and suppress the wildfire than on putting all the energies in protecting a community.

00:52:11.039 --> 00:52:24.320
Um at the moment, what we are seeing with the firefighters is that they have to employ a lot of people in protecting communities, and of course, it there's a limited amount of uh of firefighters.

00:52:24.320 --> 00:52:36.079
So if they are all placed by the communities, then nobody's going to stop the wildfire, or they only have a chance to stop the wildfire when it's actually reaching the community.

00:52:36.079 --> 00:52:52.320
So for sharing with this, uh also when when we talk uh with the firefighters here of Barcelona, what's really important for them when it comes to the risk assessment is to know whether a community is really, really vulnerable.

00:52:52.320 --> 00:52:58.639
Uh, because if it is, then they say, okay, at moment zero of the welfare, everybody out of this community.

00:52:58.639 --> 00:53:01.840
You know, uh evacuation should happen immediately.

00:53:01.840 --> 00:53:07.199
One, if they know that the community is not as vulnerable, they can wait a little bit.

00:53:07.199 --> 00:53:15.679
Uh, because now, in specifically in Catalunya, the strategy is more of shelter in place uh rather than evacuate.

00:53:15.679 --> 00:53:25.840
After what happened in Mati and in and in Portugal, where you know people actually died on the roads evacuating, this is something that's really scary.

00:53:25.840 --> 00:53:42.559
So because our homes are made of mainly of non-combustible materials, so they are less vulnerable to fire, they are the strategy now is to ask people to shelter in place, and they are only evacuating areas where they see that okay, shelter in place is not an option.

00:53:42.960 --> 00:53:50.239
I though this is again based on previous assessment, not something that's happening while the fire happens.

00:53:50.239 --> 00:53:55.199
There's no time for fire modeling, there's no time for parametric fire side simulations when the fire happens.

00:53:55.440 --> 00:54:04.639
Well, when the fire happens, the firefighters have fire analysts that are running simulations to have an idea, okay, in in four hours, where's the fire gonna be at?

00:54:04.639 --> 00:54:08.320
To then plan, okay, should we is the fire gonna impact this community?

00:54:08.320 --> 00:54:09.119
Yes and no.

00:54:09.119 --> 00:54:23.840
So they do have these uh fire analysts that once the ignition happens, they are running scenarios to then guide those that are on the field to tell them, okay, it's gonna reach this village, we have to evacuate it or not, you know.

00:54:24.320 --> 00:54:28.960
So in this case, the fire service is another place where uh fire engineers could be needed.

00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:32.880
Prefer uh in a preferred way, uh, firefighters who are fire engineers.

00:54:32.880 --> 00:54:33.840
That's actually what's important.

00:54:33.840 --> 00:54:38.639
The firefighting officers are fire engineers in Poland, every single of them.

00:54:38.719 --> 00:54:43.360
So fire engineers are or in this case, if we talk about the landscape forest engineers.

00:54:44.320 --> 00:54:45.440
Okay, that's probably more rare.

00:54:45.440 --> 00:54:50.079
Uh and uh in the recovery phase, uh, what's happened then?

00:54:50.079 --> 00:54:54.480
Assessment of the vulnerabilities and failures and rebuild without them?

00:54:55.199 --> 00:55:00.639
This is where we can also uh have a you know, we do a great job there.

00:55:00.639 --> 00:55:18.239
First of all, collecting all the information on what happened, uh, what happened to the buildings that ignited or that did not ignite, you know, then you analyze the characteristics of the buildings that were not as damaged and those that were damaged to make a comparison.

00:55:18.239 --> 00:55:26.079
So ideally, again, in the ideal world, we would have a database that's available for everybody with all that information.

00:55:26.079 --> 00:55:48.719
Uh, so this is something that we would like to push for at some in some moment to have a database where we have information on past fires and what happened, because this is then really useful uh for the recovery phase to know, like, okay, this community, for example, the buildings ignited because there was another building close by that ignited, and then the fire spread building to building.

00:55:48.719 --> 00:55:56.800
So it was not an issue of the fire spreading through the vegetation anymore, but it was a fire spread building from one building to another.

00:55:56.800 --> 00:56:14.400
Then in this case, we can suggest when rebuilding, this is really difficult to then implement, but we can suggest to increase separation distances, for example, or remove uh as much of the combustible elements of the building, uh, you know, as much as possible.

00:56:14.400 --> 00:56:27.599
Or if the fire spread more through the fuels uh inside the community, then you can think about okay, maybe when we rebuild, we should remove these types of fuels and replace them with another type.

00:56:27.599 --> 00:56:34.400
So this is something where where we can suggest a way to rebuild that is more, let's call it fire adaptive.

00:56:34.639 --> 00:56:38.960
I'm not so hyper-optimist about you know the database of previous fire studies.

00:56:38.960 --> 00:56:46.320
Because it's it's really a lot of data to go through and it's a lot of uh knowledge to be to be built.

00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:54.239
Like I I just had a few episodes ago, uh Eric Link from uh from NIST when when they were doing the campfire study.

00:56:54.239 --> 00:57:02.079
And and it's just a single wildfire, but it's such a massive study, you know, to go in depth over that one one campfire.

00:57:02.079 --> 00:57:21.679
And there has been since then probably like 20, 30 wildfires of maybe not the same like horrible outcomes and and the magnitude of destruction, but but large wildfires which could have been studied in the same like uh systematic way, and each of them could be a two, three-year research project, you know, to go in depth.

00:57:21.679 --> 00:57:27.119
So actually, I mean, I understand why we would need that and why it would be awesome to have that.

00:57:27.119 --> 00:57:30.400
It's just very difficult to get to that point.

00:57:30.800 --> 00:57:37.840
I think in Europe it might be a bit easier to implement because we don't have as many losses.

00:57:37.840 --> 00:57:56.719
So, for example, here we had uh a firefighter, firefighting corps that there's a section just dedicated to looking at the structural elements of the building once a fire has happened to see whether you know the structure is gonna collapse or not, whether people can go back to their homes or not.

00:57:56.719 --> 00:58:03.920
And they are collecting all this information, but it remains with them, you know, with that it's not made available.

00:58:03.920 --> 00:58:08.079
So we already have people that are collecting this information.

00:58:08.079 --> 00:58:15.039
Uh so we just need one more step to where, like, if we ask for it, it's there to analyze.

00:58:15.360 --> 00:58:21.840
I would highly love uh to have access to such information, and I'm very happy to receive one.

00:58:21.840 --> 00:58:32.960
And uh I support any uh work towards uh standardized reporting and improvements in data collection, especially to the fire response and structural response of buildings to fires.

00:58:32.960 --> 00:58:41.679
Um a question that I've asked you during the conference, and uh now you have more time to answer that than on the conference.

00:58:41.679 --> 00:58:58.159
So you're using a lot of tools, and and those tools are are often used, let's maybe not beyond the scope, but beyond the comfort zone of a fire safety engineer, like applying FDS to this external fire spread, uh applying fire site to create you uh a burner for FDS.

00:58:58.159 --> 00:59:06.159
How do you feel about the validation studies of those tools in terms of I don't see anything wrong with using them right now?

00:59:06.159 --> 00:59:08.480
Like you said, we work with what we have.

00:59:08.480 --> 00:59:18.000
But how what do we base our opinion that they're applicable to the scenarios and how we how we care for validity of those tools in this usage right now?

00:59:18.400 --> 00:59:30.079
So uh I know of a uh some studies that have been done in a I don't know if to call it a prescribed burn or uh let's say a small experiment.

00:59:30.079 --> 00:59:39.599
Basically, they had uh a small hill and then they placed and let's say uh a fake house on the top of the hill.

00:59:39.599 --> 00:59:46.239
So they built some, you know, with some concrete blocks, and it was, I mean, if it was shrubland, the vegetation.

00:59:46.239 --> 00:59:59.840
So they started with the fire line, they started the fire, and they made it run through the hill, and then well, through the hill, through the small slope that they had, and then they placed sensors on this house, and then.

00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:03.280
And they run FDS simulations based on this.

01:00:03.280 --> 01:00:10.719
So this is one of the ways where we can see whether FDS can actually predict what's happening in reality or not.

01:00:10.719 --> 01:00:12.880
Or whether we are completely off.

01:00:12.880 --> 01:00:18.480
Now, I've only seen, let's say, maybe two or three studies of this.

01:00:18.480 --> 01:00:21.440
So for sure, there's more work to be done there.

01:00:21.440 --> 01:00:32.000
I mean, for us uh researchers, it's always nice to do an experiment and then uh, you know, validate run an FDS simulation with this.

01:00:32.000 --> 01:00:35.679
So this would be uh a path that we can follow.

01:00:35.679 --> 01:00:49.039
Uh it's not always possible to do experiments, and especially this was a very quite a controlled environment when it comes about a wildfire that's you know in the landscape, it's built up a lot, the intensity is huge.

01:00:49.039 --> 01:00:58.880
Uh, this, of course, is it's much more difficult to unless when there's a real wildfire, you go to a house and you place your thermocouples and your death.

01:00:58.880 --> 01:01:01.360
But I see it's much more difficult.

01:01:01.760 --> 01:01:06.239
I think people would be pissed like they're evacuating, like, could I just like leave a thermocouple in here?

01:01:06.960 --> 01:01:07.599
Yeah, yeah.

01:01:07.599 --> 01:01:13.039
Here we would think about have to think about the ethics uh of it all the further.

01:01:13.039 --> 01:01:22.320
Uh, but then another thing that's being worked on right now is to simulate vegetation as particles in FDS.

01:01:22.320 --> 01:01:32.800
And this is something interesting because when it comes to, for example, to firesight, when you've done a fuel treatment, you cannot really analyze this on firesight.

01:01:32.800 --> 01:01:47.599
And also, and the same, like when you put the inputs in FDS, when you put your fire inputs, you don't really know what uh you know what the heat release of perianitaria will be of that piece of uh vegetation that's been treated versus not.

01:01:47.599 --> 01:01:53.920
So the particle method would be something that's interesting to look at this type of scenarios.

01:01:53.920 --> 01:01:58.000
When I've applied fuel treatment, so my bulk density has been reduced.

01:01:58.000 --> 01:02:03.280
I have much less vegetation, I have, let's say, maybe a bit more of a surface vegetation.

01:02:03.280 --> 01:02:09.280
Uh, I have trees that with no vegetation touching the surface, so they have been pruned.

01:02:09.280 --> 01:02:12.400
But and this is something that's been worked on.

01:02:12.400 --> 01:02:17.679
Um, we've had a little bit of a validation happening with uh the work of Mel.

01:02:17.679 --> 01:02:26.239
Uh, and I know that in Maryland they are working on this as well, but we're still, I would say, in the in the initial phases of this.01:02:26.639 --> 01:02:31.599


Yeah, the other end would be like take the real-world case studies and simulate those fires.01:02:31.599 --> 01:02:37.039


But again, I I would find it quite difficult and on a scale of a very large research project.01:02:37.039 --> 01:02:43.360


I think an interesting amount of knowledge will come uh out of maturity of the of the method.01:02:43.360 --> 01:02:48.079


So I can imagine this method is applied to, let's say, a thousand communities.01:02:48.079 --> 01:02:56.400


And then unfortunately, there must be a fire in some of them because we're we are doing that because they are at risk, because the fire is a real problem.01:02:56.400 --> 01:03:04.400


It's not a made-up problem, it's a real problem that can touch them, which means the probability a fire will happen in those communities is is quite large.01:03:04.400 --> 01:03:06.000


So there must be fires.01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:14.639


And and when there are fires, you can go back to the assessment and see how well uh this matched with the real with the real fire.01:03:14.639 --> 01:03:18.000


And I think these difficult lessons, there will be difficult lessons.01:03:18.000 --> 01:03:30.719


There will be times when we get it perfectly, there will be times where we've done uh horrible work and it went uh quite opposite, either through our uh mistakes or inability to account for some things we were not aware of.01:03:30.719 --> 01:03:35.119


But I think from those we will get the lessons on on the applicability of the tools.01:03:35.119 --> 01:03:42.880


And uh also, you know, uh, I think a lot of safety comes from the process, not necessarily the outcomes of your uh calculations, you know.01:03:42.880 --> 01:03:44.880


So that's what chemical engineers tell me.01:03:44.880 --> 01:03:46.559


Like the process is the important part.01:03:46.559 --> 01:03:54.159


The outcomes are are nice and and and important, but the process thinking about it, asking questions, like uh reassessing that that's the important part.01:03:54.400 --> 01:04:05.280


Yeah, and I wanted to say also really highlight the fact that um so you run on the simulations, you have your results, you implement uh your risk reduction measures.01:04:05.280 --> 01:04:07.760


Risk is never gonna be zero.01:04:07.760 --> 01:04:13.280


Okay, so even if you do everything correctly, we've seen examples in Canada.01:04:13.280 --> 01:04:28.400


I've seen several videos where they had homes were like in perfect conditions, the gardens were in perfect conditions, nothing there, just the green grass, and still you can see the fire brands doing lots of damage.01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:34.159


So we can for sure help in reducing the risk and reducing vulnerabilities.01:04:34.159 --> 01:04:39.679


But it's really important that we also communicate that you know it's not a risk, it's never gonna be zero.01:04:39.679 --> 01:04:43.119


And for me, the uh we can do what we have done, what we can.01:04:43.119 --> 01:04:46.159


For sure, we can limit losses a lot, but yeah.01:04:46.400 --> 01:04:53.519


There are arguably if if if there was a fire that destroyed the hardened house, it's unlikely that an unhardened house will survive.01:04:53.519 --> 01:04:56.000


It's still like uh an improvement.01:04:56.000 --> 01:05:00.239


It's just it's just sometimes the scale of the improvement is is insufficient for the problem.01:05:00.239 --> 01:05:04.639


But nevertheless, I think it doesn't, it shouldn't prevent us from doing the job.01:05:04.639 --> 01:05:11.840


And as we do more of that, as we gain expertise, as the tools improve, we will be just better and better in doing that.01:05:11.840 --> 01:05:22.639


So um perhaps some final words uh your message to the world of fire safety engineering, uh, after all of this, let's encourage them to look into the problem of all-land urban interface fire management.01:05:22.960 --> 01:05:23.679


Yeah, of course.01:05:23.679 --> 01:05:32.639


So we have, as I said, uh great opportunities, great challenges when it comes to this for fire safety engineers because it's a new field.01:05:32.639 --> 01:05:39.280


It's something that emerged recently, the the need of risk reduction at the uh at the Wen and Urban Interface.01:05:39.280 --> 01:05:42.159


You know, it's something that emerged in the last 10 years.01:05:42.159 --> 01:05:46.800


So uh lots of research to be done, lots of tools that are available.01:05:46.800 --> 01:05:55.599


As we said, they might not be very perfect, but there are tools available for engineers that they can use to analyze the problem.01:05:55.599 --> 01:06:07.679


But also another thing that I think we should be focusing on in the next years is on the education of fire safety engineers to the woey fire problem.01:06:07.679 --> 01:06:11.360


We are used to scenarios of fires inside buildings.01:06:11.360 --> 01:06:16.079


When it comes from the outside and when it comes from the vegetation, it's different.01:06:16.079 --> 01:06:24.719


So we also have to be aware that we need more training on this, we need more education on this as well.01:06:24.719 --> 01:06:47.199


So we should provide courses to professionals, we should implement uh when fire behavior modeling, for example, or we fire is in what we are teaching uh to fire safety engineers now because we are seeing that this is a problem, that it's gonna become more important and it's gonna worsen in the in the next years.01:06:47.199 --> 01:06:58.239


So, yeah, I really encourage uh fire engineers to look into go into this issue and see where they can help out the communities that are located in in woe areas.01:06:58.559 --> 01:06:59.119


Fantastic.01:06:59.119 --> 01:07:07.760


And uh, for me, the first step is to record podcast episodes like this with people who are on the front line developing those tools and changing the fire profession.01:07:07.760 --> 01:07:12.960


Pascal, thank you for uh great keynote at uh ESFS at Ljubljana.01:07:12.960 --> 01:07:14.159


It was a pleasure.01:07:14.159 --> 01:07:15.920


Uh, thank you for this interview.01:07:15.920 --> 01:07:19.039


I think we were we had a chance to go deeper on some of the things.01:07:19.039 --> 01:07:28.400


Uh, we went a little more shallow on some of the things, uh, but uh there will be papers, there will be other works coming from from you so people can build that the whole image.01:07:28.400 --> 01:07:36.159


Uh and uh for me it was uh just just fun to have you in the podcast and discuss how the profession is changing, uh whether we like it or not.01:07:36.159 --> 01:07:37.199


I think it's for the good.01:07:37.440 --> 01:07:47.280


Yeah, thank you so much for having you, it was uh really, really nice to have this chat and yeah, to spread the word on uh Wi-Fi's and the Wi-Fi.01:07:47.760 --> 01:07:49.039


And that's it, thank you for listening.01:07:49.039 --> 01:08:01.679


I'm happy that Fire Engineer could have a work at every single stage of this uh preparedness process, uh including recovery, including communicating the solutions with other stakeholders.01:08:01.679 --> 01:08:08.000


It's not just a one-off where just needed to run an FDS simulation at the start and then others carry on.01:08:08.000 --> 01:08:19.680


I think support of fire engineers could be all along the process and it could be a continuous thing actually, because you do assessment, but then you have to do a reassessment every now and then.01:08:19.680 --> 01:08:29.920


I also think fire engineers could perhaps expand their knowledge and uh and skills perhaps through mapping the terrains, mapping the fuels.01:08:29.920 --> 01:08:43.920


So far the models take very basic assumptions for the fuels, but I think fire safety engineers could figure out like much better ways to map the fuels and use them as variables in their fire safety assessments.01:08:43.920 --> 01:08:46.560


So I see a lot of work there.01:08:46.560 --> 01:08:52.399


Of course, there's a ton of work in modeling space, far sight simulations, very interesting.01:08:52.399 --> 01:09:00.560


Applying weather conditions to your simulations, oh that's extremely challenging, but yet very uh very interesting thing.01:09:00.560 --> 01:09:07.600


Running those FTS in in terrain um simulations, perhaps using Lagrangian particles as your fuel source.01:09:07.600 --> 01:09:18.000


Very interesting concept, very challenging, but uh yeah, it's it's something that can be done today already and can serve a purpose like like uh Pascal has shown.01:09:18.000 --> 01:09:26.640


So uh outside of that, of course you have the entire evacuation uh layer which we have not even covered with Pascal.01:09:26.640 --> 01:09:29.680


That's more in liking of a Woodity project.01:09:29.680 --> 01:09:32.319


I had two episodes on that previously in the podcast.01:09:32.319 --> 01:09:36.239


I've talked with Enrico, I talked with Harry and Nick from Hays Lab.01:09:36.239 --> 01:09:47.680


So the a whole layer of research that's being done in how to safely evacuate communities, how to drive the traffic, how to make sure that people can escape when they need to, you know.01:09:47.680 --> 01:09:59.039


Take all those puzzles uh together and you get some sort of uh wildfire acid, wildfire RCET analysis, which in the end is the core of fire safety engineering.01:09:59.039 --> 01:10:01.760


With just one other word outside of that.01:10:01.760 --> 01:10:12.159


This is exactly what we have been doing for buildings for years, and today the same philosophies could perhaps be extended to wildland urban interface areas.01:10:12.159 --> 01:10:13.520


This is very exciting to me.01:10:13.520 --> 01:10:15.119


I'm not sure if you're excited.01:10:15.119 --> 01:10:19.520


I I wonder if you see opportunity for growth for fire safety engineering today.01:10:19.520 --> 01:10:42.560


I mean, on one hand, it's not that we're gonna drop our jobs today and start doing those types of analysis, but if companies invest in this space, if products emerge which are easy to use, which are very straightforward to be applied, you know, someone just offers like a package from mapping the fuel till the final report and then assessment results and actionable advice.01:10:42.560 --> 01:10:51.359


I am absolutely sure there will be uh communities that would be willing to pay for that as a product because people want to invest in their safety.01:10:51.359 --> 01:10:53.680


Anyway, it's already a very long podcast episode.01:10:53.680 --> 01:10:56.159


Thank you, Pascal, for this uh interview.01:10:56.159 --> 01:10:58.720


It was a pleasure to have you in the Fire Science Show.01:10:58.720 --> 01:11:04.560


Thank you for being here with me this Wednesday, and I hope to see you at the same place, same time next week.01:11:04.560 --> 01:11:05.920


Thank you very much, cheers.01:11:05.920 --> 01:11:06.560


Bye.