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Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show.
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In Fire Safety Engineering, Fire Safety Science, we are trying to build safety.
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But we are not the only people in the world who are working with safety as a concept.
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There is many other aspects of safety, and you could argue that they all together form something that one could call a safety science.
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And for this, I have invited a special guest, George Boustras, who is a professor at European University Cyprus and the UNESCO chair in disaster risk reduction and social safety in Southeast Mediterranean, director of CERIDES, which is a center for excellence in innovation and technology.
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So it's quite a big deal, and George is, of course, quite a big deal.
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George, in his position, is trying to shape the safety in the entire South Mediterranean sector.
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And he's also the editor-in-chief of safety science, the journal of the discipline, something like our fire technology or fire safety journal.
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So definitely quite a competent person in the space of safety, but more importantly, uh a fire engineer, uh, someone who studied fire engineering, someone who has done their PhD in probabilistic risk assessments for fires.
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So uh very interesting perspectives, and George is just always a fantastic person to uh talk with such a good character.
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Um in this discussion, we discuss a lot of how fire safety looks from the perspective of safety science and how to achieve the true fire safety, one has to build some sort of a safety culture.
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And I think safety culture in the end is the theme of this podcast episode.
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So I think this will be interesting for you.
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Another lightweight uh philosophical episode about uh who we are and uh what do we do daily.
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Uh let's spin the intro and jump into the episode.
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Welcome to the Firescience Show.
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My name is Wegrzynski, and I will be your host.
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The Firescience Show is into its third year of continued support from its sponsor OFR consultants, who are an independent multi-award-winning fire engineering consultancy with a reputation for delivering innovative safety-driven solutions.
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If you're keen to find out more or join OFR consultants during this exciting period of growth, visit their website at OFRConsultants.com.
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And now back to the episode.
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Hello everybody.
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I am joined today by George Bustras from the Center of Excellence in Risk and Decision.
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Hey George, good heavy.
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Hello, hi, Wojciech.
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Dzień dobry.
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Dzień dobry, hello.
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You're always surprising me with your insane capability to speak Polish.
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It's just ridiculous.
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That's what happened when you study in London.
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I guess so.
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Well, um, probably not nowadays, but yeah, okay, but 30 years ago.
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30 years ago, probably that was the case.
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My I guess my entire generation left London back then.
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So so that that explains.
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Um, George, but I brought you in here not because of your insane polyglottic skills, but because of safety science.
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You you're quite a person in what we could call the safety science, and I feel uh fire safety is a part of that.
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So I would love uh to have a broader view on who we are, what we do from a perspective of safety science.
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Perhaps it's fair first to uh define what the safety science is, maybe.
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Yes, thank you very much for the invitation and uh Wojciech.
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I mean, you actually know I was waiting for my turn.
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You know, you are you are very famous among our circles.
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Let me tell you that I'm gonna give you my part of safety science.
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Yes, being uh being a fire scientist myself.
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Okay, a fire engineer, that's how I started.
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And uh, well, at some point I realized that uh it is not only about fire, it is about safety in general.
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Is it occupational safety?
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Is it fire safety?
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Is it societal safety?
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In other words, civil protection or something like this.
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We're always talking about the same domain.
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And uh there is a famous, a really famous uh professor, uh Paul Schuste, who came from the original uh Delft group of uh safety scientists that uh defined safety science.
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There was Paul Schuste, Andrew Hale, Frank Hultenmund, Frank is still around.
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And these people they were the founders of safety science.
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And in one of his papers, uh Paul, he describes uh safety culture, which is actually what combines, what links everything in the domain of safety.
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He defined it as the glue that keeps all the tiles together.
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So think of fire science as one tile, occupational safety and health as another tile, uh, other parts of uh science as other tiles, and this connecting glue is what keeps everything together.
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This safety culture notion which emerged after the Chernobyl uh disaster, you were too young.
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I went through that.
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There is a very funny story.
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I was a Boy Scout.
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Uh when uh okay, you know that we found out a few days later, yeah?
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Yeah, yeah.
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Old X7 Soviet Union, but no remarks on that.
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And uh when uh you know, like it was on the news, they said that because you know, like it was up in the air, they said don't go out very much, and if it rains, don't be out in the nature.
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And the Boy Scouts they took us for an excursion uh in the rain, so that's why, you know, like uh sometimes you know I feel you know, like uh I don't know, like I shine, probably, you know, like from the immense this explains a lot, George.
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This explains a lot actually a lot, probably.
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Yeah, it's probably a radiation of that time, anyway.
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So, yes, this is it.
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I mean, you know, like this safety culture deals, you know, like not only with the technical parts, doesn't only deal with you know, like there is assessments, it is the education, it is the training.
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Uh, there are so many different things that uh we need to take into account.
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So, yeah, I cannot provide you an exact definition.
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I never remember that's great, that's great.
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But yes, I mean uh we you know we are under one roof, all of us.
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Yeah, my my next question is is what exactly safety is like is safety the absence of hazards, the absence of danger, the state of no harm?
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Like, uh how how would you define safety from your perspective?
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Okay, from my perspective, since I'm a risk assessment, BAT was in a probabilistic fire risk assessment.
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I try to link safety with risk.
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Okay, so for me, a safe environment would be uh an environment with minimal risk.
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You cannot get rid of risk, you can minimize it.
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And all these measures that you are taking in order to minimize the risk, in my mind, make up this uh safety environment in your office, in your work uh place, you know, like in your internet, in your phone, whatever.
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So, okay, well, the tying it to risk makes it easy, but if you in in many like legislational systems, risk is not the the approach you would like to take.
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You go, you know, explicit prescriptive codes, etc.
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etc.
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Is there a way we can link uh to safety in those systems without to raise this uh void check because uh I always remember this famous paper by Bukowski, uh the late Bukowski uh from uh MIST, if I'm not uh mistaken, who first spoke about uh performance-based codes.
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And uh basically, for me, at least you know, when I started my PhD at that time, it was uh the time that I read one of his papers, one of his presentations in a conference or something, and this was something that it stayed with me, and actually it still stays with me.
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Indeed, some countries they have very rigid, prescriptive-based codes, both in uh fire safety as well as in safety altogether.
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But I think the advancements of technology and the way that things are progressing, if we invest more on prevention, if we invest more on education and training, then we can really switch to performance-based codes, not only in fire safety, but in uh occupational safety and health as well.
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There are many, there is a lot of room for improvement for that.
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This is gonna be quite a philosophical and abstract explosion, but but I like it.
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I like it, I like it.
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It's not you know like exactly philosophical, but I guess you know, like for someone who works, you know, like in social sciences, this is you know like chit chat.
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But engineers, you know, like it is, you know, a very deep conversation.
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Yeah, because I'm I'm an engineer, I like to uh work with uh robust engineering tools.
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Well, you you you dropped me on a risk that you use risk to define it, so you took uh half of my questions away.
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So I'm gonna pretend you have not done it.
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Um go ahead.
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Pretend that I never said it as well.
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I if I if I uh if I design a building and I'm responsible for providing fire safety in it, or perhaps broader safety in it, how much of it is in my control domain, you know, because as an engineer I have uh some tools, but uh there are a lot of things out of my scope of control.
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Yes, you're absolutely right.
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But let us not forget that uh safety is the outcome of a constant cost-benefit analysis, right?
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At the same time, you may have to make sure that you uh respect, not only respect, but you protect human life.
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So um, you know, like again, you know, like this goes back to education and training.
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If we educate our um how can it licensing services to understand that engineers are not only trying to steal, you know, like from them, but they are trying, you know, like to present a safety case which is gonna be sufficient enough, but perhaps thought or present it in a different way, then we would have made you know a huge step.
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Um, if uh a fire engineer would like to look at uh fire engineering from the broader perspective of of safety science, like if you zoom out, how do you see fire engineering as a profession and what fire engineers do?
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Yes.
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Okay, let me tell you uh how I'm thinking as a fire engineer.
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Okay, fire engineering perhaps is not for all how can I say for all constructions.
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Sometimes, you know, like uh simpler construction, simpler infrastructure do not require so much thought.
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Of course, they need the fire uh safety measures, there is no question about that.
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But you know, like there is not so much engineering work involved, you know, like things are uh there.
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But there are uh over the years, and especially nowadays, there are much more complex uh situations, many more uh mixed-use buildings that require all this engineering thought.
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So I think we have to focus on the important and not fight for the non-so important.
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Because I'm under the impression that as a community, sometimes we spend so much time in uh trying to provide solutions for problems that actually are uh self-solved or whatever.
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You know, like you they don't need that much uh thought.
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Yeah, sometimes all you need is like a 60-minute wall or a non-combustible structure or a simple sprinkle installation, and you and you have solved most of the problems.
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Exactly, yes.
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But there are other issues that you know uh that they are much more complicated, especially when it comes to mixed-use buildings.
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Or um all the lessons that were not learning.
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When I do at a university, I in our master course uh we have a class which is called fire safety management, which is uh mostly fire safety management, but it has elements of fire safety engineering.
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And we try to make the students, it's a master course.
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So we try to make the students aware of how fire risk assessment uh landed on the table.
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And we go back, you know, like to the Bradford City Stadium uh fire, we go back to King's Cross First Fire, uh, the Piper Alpha fire, and all this that started leading to lessons learned, and one led to and finally we ended up with RRO and uh BSW99 at that time, that they were big steps.
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Or um, you know, like how the Americans came out, you know, like it is very important also for us fire engineers to understand how we ended up with this.
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Because I'm under the impression that sometimes we simply see the solutions there, we simply see the tools there.
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We don't understand what was the perspective behind them.
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That's why sometimes we cannot apply them uh directly, or we try to apply solutions that they shouldn't apply, or they cannot.
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When you tell your students about those uh those uh tragic incidents, how how how do you summarize the the findings?
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Because in each of those catastrophes, we've learned something else.
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How do we summarize this into one common good practice?
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I try to summarize it as a struggle because if you really go back to the uh lessons learned exercise after the Bradford City Stadium, you realize that at that time, with the analytical tools that they had, or the you know, like the scientific steps that uh science had undertaken at that time, they came up with some uh conclusions, but these conclusions were not solving the problem.
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For instance, they said, okay, we're going to replace uh wooden um structures, you know, like in the football grounds, but uh smoking was still allowed, which was actually the cause uh of the wooden, you know, like stands were there for a hundred years and nothing had happened.
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It was the cigarettes, and then we saw a cigarette sparting the fire a few years later, a couple of years later, at um uh King's Cross.
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So after King's Cross, we realized what happened.
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Then with the next one and the next one, what I try to teach my students is to always see things under a historical perspective.
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Sometimes we say, okay, this was not done, and blah blah blah.
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Okay, but if you go back at that time, if you go back at the social situation, the economic situation, the political situation of that time, you realize that uh what was done was sufficient enough.
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You couldn't have done more steps, you couldn't have made more steps, steps because okay, these steps were very uncertain.
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So one thing leads to another.
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And this is why we have to keep the perspective to understand where it all started from and then move to the next steps.
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Yeah, I wonder if we're moving actually forward with this way of thinking, but because today a lot of this critical thinking is replaced by modeling, it's is replaced by extremely overly complicated approaches that are not really necessary.
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And um it's not only about modeling, voice with all due respect, yeah, you have to keep the uh human perspective in there.
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That's why you know I keep on uh referring to risk because at risk assessment you may use uh models, you may use various uh things, but at this at the end of the day, there is always a human who's going to check whether this process has been completed or something.
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We always need to apply common sense, and models don't always apply common sense.
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Yeah, what we end up with is sometimes people demanding uh the models for no reason.
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I I think it goes back down, George, to the definition of safety that uh for those people who demand models, the the safety is meeting a clause of the code, or for them it's complying to specific requirements.
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Is is providing uh a nice line in your uh expertise that um ASET was uh larger than R set, therefore the building is safe.
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This is what is sought by authorities, and uh I struggle to put equality sign between this and safety.
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It is.
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I mean, yeah, like you say, you know, the people are demanding, you know, like uh um engineering solutions without understanding what they are.
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Very, very strange feel.
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Even, you know, like for simple cases, you will be asked for a probabilistic model or for a you know, like another model, whereas you can see that by simply applying certain measures, you will have a very safe environment with minimal risk.
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Uh interesting case.
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I'm working a lot with tunnels nowadays, and uh uh we we're in the middle of the designing multiple, multiple tunnels in Poland, and one of the aspects of designing a tunnel is the cross passages between the tunnels, and we obviously have to choose the right distance between them.
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Well, technically it's it's usually chosen by someone at the at the government who says, Oh, in this tunnel we want 250 meters, and the other guy says, No, no, in my tunnel I want 175.
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And it's just an arbitrary, arbitrary decision, you know.
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And each if you make a TBM tunnel, each cross passage will cost you, like, I don't know, 10 billion euros.
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It's it's ridiculous how expensive they are.
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Now, uh an a thing that that that shocks me is that we had a fire in Warsaw Tunnel a year ago, and the only person who used an evacuation exit was the guy whose car burns down because he he really did not have anything to leave the tunnel with, and everyone else just drove out of the tunnel.
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And I and I'm left here thinking, like, okay, I did all this fancy modeling, I did all those AZR set calculations, etc.
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And in the end, like it was one guy, and everyone else drove out of the tunnel, even if they were not supposed to, and they were very safe while driving out of the tunnel, they nothing happened.
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So it's like you have to think, we have to think how many fires do we have yearly in tunnels?
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And secondly, we have to always think of something which is very important, especially when I speak to the fire service.
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I do a class of risk assessment at the fire academy here in Cyprus.
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Nothing fancy, just uh general.
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And when I go there, I ask the firemen and firewomen that are like brand new students, first year students.
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Ask them, I say, Whom are you here to protect?
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And the society thinks that the fire service is there to protect your house, your car, or something.
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The fire service is there to protect your life.
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What you do with your property is the risks that you are taking.
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Because if I spend, I don't know, 10 million euro on defending, you know, like your uh property, making it, you know, like brand, you know, like amazing with all the latest systems, and then all of a sudden you simply decide to lie down on your uh five-seat sofa in the evening and you smoke your cigarette or cigar and it drops, the systems are not gonna make any difference.
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The only difference they will make is they will minimize the damage, for sure, yeah.
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But we always have to apply the perspective.
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Whom am I here to support?
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The public, human lives.
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Okay, I'm not saying that you have to abandon infrastructure and let it burn, but we have to have a dialogue with society to make them understand that sometimes this goes also to forest fires as well.
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It's not only structural fires.
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That, you know, many of them are the outcome of your uh risky behavior.
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And it is really risky, and you have to do something about it because, you know, no matter what I do, I will never be fast enough to be there.
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And uh you are taking, you know, the chances.
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That's why I keep on talking about education and training.
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We have all these fires, and I keep on advocating for the last few years, uh, I don't know, for the last 10 years, saying that we have to go back to the primary education system.
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We taught our children, you know, like to recycle.
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My children, you know, they will recycle the bottles, they will recycle the paper, they will recycle so many things.
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Why?
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Because this is a message, it is a culture that they built with the help of the education system.
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And what are we doing?
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We're burning our houses, we are burning our cars, we are burning our forests.
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Why?
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Because we are using uh campaigns, advertisement campaigns that are not fitting the purpose.
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We spend so much time and on uh so much time and money advertising, but we don't spend much time and money on educating the people, things on how to produce less risks.
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This is the important bit.
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We are still producing many risks in the built environment, in the natural environment.
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Have you found a way to discuss this with politicians and people uh positions in power?
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Actually, I have.
00:23:00.720 --> 00:23:01.519
I believe.
00:23:01.519 --> 00:23:05.200
Okay, no, well, I I convinced myself that I have.
00:23:05.200 --> 00:23:09.920
But don't forget, like what I said before, you have to look at the perspective.
00:23:09.920 --> 00:23:15.359
You cannot go tomorrow to the school and say, guys, you know, we're gonna change the world.
00:23:15.359 --> 00:23:18.240
Safety is about changing the world.
00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:22.079
Fire safety, safety, because what is the outcome of safety?
00:23:22.079 --> 00:23:27.920
A better environment, a better built environment, a better, whatever, natural environment.
00:23:27.920 --> 00:23:30.240
So it is about changing the world.
00:23:30.240 --> 00:23:51.519
And politicians, as long as you go and present uh what are the costs that are associated, unfortunately, in the majority of occasions after a catastrophe, and you know, like the uh social pressure that they are feeling, they're willing to listen.
00:23:51.519 --> 00:24:10.799
The only problem with uh not our politicians, politicians in general, is that they focus on establishing a system which is gonna have medium term, medium term, and uh you know, like long-term aims, but they mostly want to focus on what they're gonna get immediately.
00:24:10.799 --> 00:24:29.599
And with safety, I was reading about that 10 years ago, 15 years ago, but it is true, I realize this any type of investment, not only money, time investment, effort investment that you will make in uh safety, it will yield after five, six, seven years.
00:24:29.599 --> 00:24:31.200
You will not see the results in it.
00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:45.440
Not sure if you follow it, but I I had a discussion with Swiss fire engineers recently with uh Gianluca and Sofia, and uh they implement the new risk-oriented code or risk-based uh fire safety code for all of the Switzerland.
00:24:45.440 --> 00:24:53.119
And uh one of the elements that really struck me is that they've opened this fire safety engineering at ETH Surich a few years ago.
00:24:53.119 --> 00:24:55.359
So it's a part of the this whole strategy.
00:24:55.359 --> 00:25:05.680
They want to introduce a new fire safety regulations that are based on on risk and um clearly require more expertise from a larger group of people.
00:25:05.680 --> 00:25:09.039
What they start doing a few years before, they start educating people.
00:25:09.039 --> 00:25:12.559
This is an amazing example of how you can plan ahead.
00:25:13.279 --> 00:25:15.519
But you have to have a holistic solution.
00:25:15.519 --> 00:25:16.480
That's the thing.
00:25:16.480 --> 00:25:21.200
You cannot have only parts of the solution, you must see the whole picture.
00:25:21.200 --> 00:25:27.039
If you see the whole picture, then you will start putting the pieces of the puzzle everywhere.
00:25:27.039 --> 00:25:32.000
If you just see, you know, like a small part of the picture, you will never find a solution.
00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:34.240
It will just be sort of fixes.
00:25:34.240 --> 00:25:36.720
Fire is not like having a cold.
00:25:36.720 --> 00:25:40.240
Fire is like having you know like something more serious.
00:25:40.240 --> 00:25:42.400
You must go for the full treatment.
00:25:42.400 --> 00:25:48.720
You don't only, you know, like take a panadol or something to be resolve your problem.
00:25:48.720 --> 00:25:53.279
You cannot resolve a problem, you know, like in a block of floods.
00:25:53.279 --> 00:25:55.039
You must change the culture.
00:25:55.359 --> 00:25:55.680
Yeah.
00:25:55.680 --> 00:25:58.400
I was about to ask about the culture.
00:25:58.400 --> 00:25:59.839
Thank you for bringing me there.
00:25:59.839 --> 00:26:09.359
So if uh one wanted to build a culture of fire safety to create the long-lasting change in their country, where where would they start with?
00:26:09.359 --> 00:26:14.400
You know, regulating products, education, uh uh, revisiting the fire code.
00:26:14.400 --> 00:26:21.039
Everyone here says, oh, we need to write the code from the start, and I'm like, oh God, this is not gonna this is gonna be difficult.
00:26:21.519 --> 00:26:26.720
The code is the code, you know, like and it will uh appeal to the engineers, which is great.
00:26:26.720 --> 00:26:37.039
But you have to go to the primary school, you have to start from there to start teaching, uh, to start understanding what is the uh the goal of what you've actually achieved.
00:26:37.039 --> 00:26:38.559
What do you want to achieve?
00:26:38.559 --> 00:26:40.559
You don't want people to start fires.
00:26:40.559 --> 00:26:42.480
In other words, what do you want to achieve?
00:26:42.480 --> 00:26:45.039
You want people to produce less risks.
00:26:45.039 --> 00:26:50.960
If they produce less risks, you will have less uh catastrophes, let's say.
00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:55.839
Less floods, less fires, less uh less, you know, like whatever it is.
00:26:55.839 --> 00:26:58.319
So you have to start, you know, like at this stage.
00:26:58.319 --> 00:27:07.039
But you don't only have to wait, you know, like for this generation to come to power, you know, like 20, 30 years later.
00:27:07.039 --> 00:27:12.559
You have to redesign totally your risk communication campaigns.
00:27:12.559 --> 00:27:16.079
I see every, I'm not a communication expert.
00:27:16.079 --> 00:27:18.400
I'm just you know like a spectator.
00:27:18.400 --> 00:27:31.359
In the summer here in Southern Europe and Southeast Mediterranean, uh, when there is no World Cup and where there is no, you know, like athletics, we watch uh fires in the television.
00:27:31.359 --> 00:27:32.960
It is a spectacle.
00:27:32.960 --> 00:27:34.240
It is a spectacle.
00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:43.119
If you ask a psychologist or a sociologist, they will tell you that fire goes back with the beginning of the humanity, so we are very much attracted to it.
00:27:43.119 --> 00:27:51.599
So it's something that we watch, you know, like either with horror or if we have, you know, like a fine place, you know, like with uh in peace.
00:27:51.599 --> 00:27:55.119
But our campaigns are totally out.
00:27:55.119 --> 00:27:56.240
What do they do?
00:27:56.240 --> 00:28:01.599
Our campaigns they create heroics about our firemen and firewomen.
00:28:01.599 --> 00:28:03.680
100% right.
00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:04.799
I agree.
00:28:04.799 --> 00:28:07.119
These are the modern-day heroes.
00:28:07.119 --> 00:28:11.440
But at the same time, are you teaching something to the society?
00:28:11.440 --> 00:28:13.119
No, you're not teaching.
00:28:13.119 --> 00:28:15.680
You are teaching respect for the fire service.
00:28:15.680 --> 00:28:16.640
You do.
00:28:16.640 --> 00:28:17.279
Great.
00:28:17.279 --> 00:28:33.759
And I'm, you know, like I come from a family that uh all my ancestors were wearing uniforms, either police or uh military or something, so I respect, you know, like the armed forces, you know, like in the security apparatus enormously, but okay.
00:28:33.759 --> 00:28:37.920
What am I taught from this communication campaign?
00:28:37.920 --> 00:28:41.519
There is a communication campaign, is not working.
00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:42.640
Not at all.
00:28:42.640 --> 00:28:46.079
I don't know if anyone is measuring the succession feat.
00:28:46.079 --> 00:28:51.359
Nowadays we have a tool, we have the mobile phone, we have all these applications.
00:28:51.359 --> 00:28:56.400
Then someone is gonna say, yeah, but there is an application by the fire service.
00:28:56.400 --> 00:29:05.359
But if the application of the fire service is made simply to illustrate work they do, it has not achieved its goal.
00:29:05.359 --> 00:29:15.599
The purpose of this exercise must be for the civilian to learn, for the civilian to change.
00:29:15.599 --> 00:29:24.160
And like Wojciech, when we went to school, there were uh two things that helped us uh develop our skills and our characters.
00:29:24.160 --> 00:29:31.359
One was the education system and the skills that we got from the school, and the second thing was the fact that there were some rules.
00:29:31.359 --> 00:29:39.599
Okay, I'm not talking about the old education system where the rule was this, and I'm for sure I'm not talking about that.
00:29:39.599 --> 00:29:52.319
But in a societal level, you need to have a focused campaign, which is gonna be a 30-year campaign, plus you need to have the rules, rigid rules.
00:29:52.319 --> 00:29:54.000
What are the rigid rules?
00:29:54.000 --> 00:30:00.559
If I catch you burning something, if it is your responsibility, then you will pay for that.
00:30:00.559 --> 00:30:03.440
You will pay in many different ways.
00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:14.720
So that's how we build our societies, and that's how sometimes our societies are not functioning because we forget the rules or we forget the education, or we forget both.
00:30:14.720 --> 00:30:16.559
It is a societal issue.
00:30:16.559 --> 00:30:26.480
A major outcome, perhaps, from our discussion today is to realize that fires are not only engineering issues, they are mostly social issues.
00:30:26.720 --> 00:30:47.440
Yeah, when I do a lot of those interviews, and we awfully often come to the same conclusion that it's like uh the the fires and especially the consequences of fires are heavily socially linked by by far, and you you are way, way, way more likely to die at your home from a fire than you are in a subway station or in a stadium.
00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:54.240
One thing that I I possibly like, I'm not sure if I fully agree with you because uh from this discussion.
00:30:54.240 --> 00:30:57.359
Yeah, yeah, this is gonna make it interesting.
00:30:57.359 --> 00:31:16.559
So far, in this discussion, you you've um made the case for fires being uh strongly human-related, like a person with a cigarette, and uh like up to a point where where you you find a solution in education because that makes them uh less likely to happen.
00:31:16.559 --> 00:31:36.319
Well, it I think it was true for many, many years in the human like when now I started thinking about what could be the origins of fires, and indeed a lot of them are are human causes, and even fires like uh I don't know, electrical circuit fires, uh which is a common cause, it's uh also a human error because of the lack of maintenance, you know.
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:53.359
But uh now, despite years, and for many years in the future, a lot of a lot of fires will start with lithium-ion devices kind of randomly, like you you don't have a choice that your laptop randomly goes onto onto fire.
00:31:53.359 --> 00:32:00.640
I I had a laptop that well, it didn't go onto fire, but it broke itself because the battery has puffed into five times its size.
00:32:00.640 --> 00:32:02.079
It was it was crazy.
00:32:02.079 --> 00:32:06.480
So, how does the safety culture meet this new uh enemy?
00:32:06.799 --> 00:32:18.559
Right, you are absolutely right in what you said, and uh, what I believe is that um, you know, there are a number of things, especially when you spoke about the uh um lithium ion uh batteries.
00:32:18.559 --> 00:32:38.319
It is uh what uh I'm thinking we have created a risk in uh usually in the city centers or the areas that the young generation live, or you know, like uh especially in southern Europe where the immigrants live, nothing against the immigrants.
00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:52.319
I'm just saying, you know, like that there are areas that some parts of the town that sometimes they're not the best in terms of the fact that they have been abandoned by the owners, and the you know, like immigration tends to live there.
00:32:52.319 --> 00:32:57.119
And we have created a huge issue with the batteries.
00:32:57.119 --> 00:33:13.119
We have brought to the market the batteries, which is great because you know they give, you know, like uh micromobility, you know, like all the delivery, all these things are working properly and in a very cheap way, but at the same time, we have not come up with the solution.
00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:17.279
So it's again a social uh thinking, you know, like problem.
00:33:17.279 --> 00:33:20.960
We always have to think of uh this.
00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:26.960
When I do I do another class, uh, which is industrial catastrophes, I do too, okay.
00:33:26.960 --> 00:33:28.559
Depending on the semester.
00:33:28.559 --> 00:33:32.160
The other one is industrial catastrophes, loss prevention, in other words.
00:33:32.160 --> 00:34:00.160
And I have come up to one conclusion that industrial catastrophes either happen because of bad design, so the thing was designed, you know, like in a very bad way, so at some point it was going to uh collapse, you know, like somehow collapse, burn whatever it is, flood, or by human factors, uh, you know, like uh someone, you know, like uh took the wrong decision and all that.
00:34:00.160 --> 00:34:04.480
But a lot of them are happening by a combination of both.
00:34:04.480 --> 00:34:06.480
What is a combination of both?
00:34:06.480 --> 00:34:08.320
It's called maintenance.
00:34:08.320 --> 00:34:22.320
You are doing maintenance, and it is like these movies that you see uh that someone is trying, you know, like to open an engine, you know, like and when they reassemble it, they end up with 10 more screws that they don't know what they have done.
00:34:22.320 --> 00:34:35.199
I know it sounds ridiculous, but a vast majority of large catastrophes that happened in the past, including Piper Alpha, they were the outcomes of bad maintenance.
00:34:35.199 --> 00:34:40.719
Bad maintenance is not only the engineering part, it's the communication part.
00:34:40.719 --> 00:34:44.079
Because when you do maintenance, you interrupt the system.
00:34:44.079 --> 00:34:46.960
So you must communicate this interruption.
00:34:46.960 --> 00:34:49.679
We tend not to do this.
00:34:49.679 --> 00:35:02.480
So it is a mixture, it is sometimes the infrastructure which is not taken care of, sometimes it is our uh decisions that are doing that, but yeah, it's a complicated thing.
00:35:02.480 --> 00:35:32.639
And we tend to come up with uh new technologies, but we do not demand in advance for this technology to be checked for possible safety issues, like the batteries, for instance, amazing, great, but all of a sudden, you know, you have every scooter in every floor in every building, um, you know, like charged and creating you know like a risk there.
00:35:32.639 --> 00:35:35.679
A risk that you know it's not easy to to work around.
00:35:35.679 --> 00:35:39.440
We don't have a solution for these fires yet.
00:35:39.920 --> 00:35:45.920
Well, it's really difficult because well, you you said the building culture is a long process, it may last a generation.
00:35:47.039 --> 00:35:48.960
So we can't even start it, my friend.
00:35:49.360 --> 00:35:49.679
That's it.
00:35:49.679 --> 00:36:04.719
Yeah, but I wonder, like, um, if we start today, how how do we deal with the new challenge like the lithium-ion battery that will come in 10-20 years, which we don't we we don't even know about it existing yet, you know?
00:36:04.719 --> 00:36:20.559
I mean, I can you can be building a safety culture and learn children to not smoke cigarettes in their in their in their sofas, but uh perhaps uh now the the risk is not the cigarette but but the e-cigarette, which is no longer creating this direct ignition hazard.
00:36:20.559 --> 00:36:25.360
But you know, uh if you throw it into a trash bin, you're gonna have a bad time throwing trash away.
00:36:25.519 --> 00:36:28.320
Um, the same with what you teach them.
00:36:28.320 --> 00:36:34.719
In our times, uh, you know, like Carter Erason used to, you know, like drink and uh smoke, and that was it.
00:36:34.719 --> 00:36:38.880
You know, you just told people, you know, dispose of your cigarette, you are okay.
00:36:38.880 --> 00:36:45.199
And nowadays you have to make sure that they dispose of their e-cigarette in a responsible way.
00:36:45.199 --> 00:36:55.199
So, with regards, you know, like to the battery, what are we did, what we should be teaching our children is how to properly charge the battery.
00:36:55.199 --> 00:37:06.480
To me, if you ask me, you know, like I once uh drove uh for some time an electric car, they told me, you know, like it has to go up to 80 percent because this preserves the battery, da-da-da-da-da-da.
00:37:06.480 --> 00:37:11.360
For me, it was you know, three hours, you know, like fast charging, 150.
00:37:11.360 --> 00:37:13.039
Okay, that's what I know.
00:37:13.599 --> 00:37:13.760
Nice.
00:37:14.079 --> 00:37:21.519
Do I know was you know, like someone told me, okay, you told me, you know, I'm telling you, you know, you we have to make one piece as well.
00:37:21.519 --> 00:37:22.320
Are we?
00:37:22.639 --> 00:37:33.440
Yeah, but lithium batteries is not the only thing that uh that exceeds our expectations in building this culture because also the how wildfires move through Europe with the climate change.
00:37:33.440 --> 00:37:37.039
Like I don't have them yet in Poland, yet, but I will have them.
00:37:37.039 --> 00:37:46.159
Yet, yeah, so so you know, uh a society that has never been prepared for a wildfire, how do they deal with that?
00:37:46.159 --> 00:38:00.559
I see this another thing that it's hard to build a culture around this type of prevention where your society has never been exposed to such hazards, where your engineering systems have never been built around those hazards.
00:38:00.559 --> 00:38:13.199
You know, everything we have set in place for the system that provides the society with safety and arguably it kind of works, it's it's not actually meant for this one particular thing or this another particular thing.
00:38:13.199 --> 00:38:14.639
That's kind of stressful.
00:38:14.960 --> 00:38:22.480
It is stressful because, especially with regards to forest fires, uh, like I said before, we are spectators.
00:38:22.480 --> 00:38:23.679
We're just watching.
00:38:23.679 --> 00:38:34.880
Or uh in our eyes as a society, if you want to be involved as a citizen, you must be um uh how do you call it a voluntary firefighter.
00:38:34.880 --> 00:38:42.960
Sorry, I cannot be a voluntary firefighter because you know, like I'm old, I'm overweight, you know, like I'm not really fit and all that.
00:38:42.960 --> 00:39:05.920
But but but but but but nobody ever tells me that during the winter or during, you know, like uh after winter before the start of the fire season, I can go out in a forest and I can, you know, like collect some of the debris, some of the fire load, or nobody comes and tells me.
00:39:05.920 --> 00:39:08.559
Actually, some countries started doing that.
00:39:08.559 --> 00:39:17.440
For instance, Greece has made it compulsory for someone to clear their property and they give you proper instructions.
00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:22.000
And if you don't do this, you are fined, which is a great step.
00:39:22.000 --> 00:39:24.239
People will focus on the fine.
00:39:24.239 --> 00:39:25.039
Yeah, okay.
00:39:25.039 --> 00:39:27.360
If you don't claim, you will focus on the fine.
00:39:27.360 --> 00:39:30.880
But if you claim, then you will not have to face the fine.
00:39:30.880 --> 00:39:31.360
Okay.
00:39:31.360 --> 00:39:34.800
So this is about rules and education.
00:39:34.800 --> 00:39:39.519
And this is, you know, like uh, what is my role as a citizen?
00:39:39.519 --> 00:39:41.599
We said that it is a social issue.
00:39:41.599 --> 00:39:44.000
Nobody's telling me what is my role, you know.
00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:51.599
Like um, I you know, seriously, you know, like uh love, you know, like when you tR5 fighters are doing a great thing.
00:39:51.599 --> 00:40:01.679
Not all of us can be that, so we must have a supporting role, and this is a discussion that we Must start at some point.
00:40:01.679 --> 00:40:04.800
Europe, Europe, United Europe.
00:40:04.800 --> 00:40:07.199
We say so many things, bad things about EU.
00:40:07.199 --> 00:40:10.639
Seriously, you know, it has become really boring.
00:40:10.639 --> 00:40:12.719
EU has done many great things as well.
00:40:12.719 --> 00:40:14.400
Among them it is RescEU.
00:40:14.400 --> 00:40:17.440
Perhaps it is not sufficient enough.
00:40:17.440 --> 00:40:20.000
Okay, it will become.
00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:30.800
But Resk EU is not only about the airplanes, it is also it has a second leg, which perhaps has not been activated yet, which has to do with prevention.
00:40:30.800 --> 00:40:35.199
And prevention means education and training as well.
00:40:35.199 --> 00:40:36.559
And a role setting.
00:40:37.599 --> 00:40:44.559
So uh for the last part of the conversation, I would like to go back to the engineering side and fire engineering building.
00:40:44.559 --> 00:40:55.119
So I I would love to learn what uh can we learn from other areas of safety science like occupational or industrial fire protection.
00:40:55.119 --> 00:40:57.039
I'll I'll give you a broader context.
00:40:57.039 --> 00:41:12.960
The more I talk with people, in in most of the legislation, or in at least in the systems that I know, which is the Polish and the British, you have those documents that uh that give that guide you how to achieve safety in in buildings.
00:41:12.960 --> 00:41:15.840
In UK, they call them uh the safety strategies.
00:41:15.840 --> 00:41:26.960
Uh there's uh a fire safety case now in the UK, in Poland we have the fire scenarios, we we have the general uh fire requirements that you have to write in for a building.
00:41:26.960 --> 00:41:30.239
These are the documents that the fire safety engineer creates.
00:41:30.239 --> 00:41:37.119
And I I see a tremendous I I now see more value in them than I've seen when I graduated.
00:41:37.119 --> 00:41:45.440
You know, when I've graduated, I seen the fire documentation as a boring list of uh reiterating what the law tells you.
00:41:45.440 --> 00:41:51.599
And now I see them as uh ability for me to kind of shape the the culture within the building.
00:41:51.599 --> 00:41:57.840
Maybe I'm not gonna change the culture of the country, but I can change the culture of the building by doing this document well.
00:41:57.840 --> 00:42:06.079
I would love to learn like how documents of this type have been implemented in other parts of the safety science and are they important?
00:42:06.079 --> 00:42:07.280
What can we learn here?
00:42:07.599 --> 00:42:10.320
Okay, firstly, let me a question about you.
00:42:10.320 --> 00:42:14.320
The Polish and the British code they are uh quite uh similar.
00:42:14.960 --> 00:42:16.159
I don't think so.
00:42:16.480 --> 00:42:17.760
Okay, okay, okay.
00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:23.440
The Cypriot uh code is quite uh similar to the British code.
00:42:23.440 --> 00:42:27.440
In many occasions, you know, I can see that they are almost identical.
00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:30.639
The Greek code, for instance, is different.
00:42:30.639 --> 00:42:34.159
Not extremely different, but you know, like there are uh different.
00:42:34.159 --> 00:42:42.320
So what I'm learning from that is that hopefully someone has tried to localize this fire code.
00:42:42.320 --> 00:42:46.159
Someone, for instance, you know, like in our countries, we have earthquakes.
00:42:46.159 --> 00:42:48.480
So this is an important part as well.
00:42:48.480 --> 00:42:53.519
And we have to come closer together, you know, like the safety domain.
00:42:53.519 --> 00:42:56.639
And the fire safety domain must come closer.
00:42:56.639 --> 00:42:58.320
What do I mean here?
00:42:58.320 --> 00:43:13.760
It is uh compulsory by law here in Cyprus and in Greece, before you start a company, before you open, you know, like for a you know, you obtain your license to do a safety risk assessment.
00:43:13.760 --> 00:43:16.000
So do a safety risk assessment.
00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:18.880
From a business perspective, from from what or earthquake?
00:43:18.880 --> 00:43:21.840
Yeah, from an organizational perspective, yes.
00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:25.760
I mean, every organization, you know, like smaller or bigger, they must do this.
00:43:25.760 --> 00:43:27.599
Uh it's compulsory by law.
00:43:27.599 --> 00:43:32.960
I don't know if you know, like it is uh all risk check, but it is compulsory by law.
00:43:32.960 --> 00:43:37.519
But we have to borrow elements from other codes as well.
00:43:37.519 --> 00:43:51.360
I mean, when I worked in the UK, we had a yearly fire risk assessment, again compulsory, which in Southern Europe we don't, in all the properties, in all the properties with common areas.
00:43:51.360 --> 00:43:51.840
Okay.
00:43:51.840 --> 00:44:10.000
So there are so many things that we can learn from each other, but the problem is that uh, let's say internal security or internal safety aspects uh are subject to the national authorities.
00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:22.480
And I believe that one measure, at least in the European Union level, would be, and I don't know if there is such a committee, perhaps it is, but I don't know.
00:44:22.480 --> 00:44:24.159
So, excuse my ignorance.
00:44:24.159 --> 00:44:47.119
If there is no such committee, and there should be a committee that uh should bring together the legislators and the practitioners to try to see what they can borrow from each uh other's fire code, from each other's uh safety code, and seeing uh how they can influence each other.
00:44:47.119 --> 00:44:58.800
For instance, the British fire code, the British standards and RRO and uh the approved document B and all that, they are beacons of knowledge.
00:44:58.800 --> 00:45:13.119
I mean uh obviously they are um applying locally to the British uh you know, like sort of built environment, but at the same time, they they can be used.
00:45:13.119 --> 00:45:24.320
Um, a lot of the elements that they carry, they could be you know like very important elements for the development or for the revamp of other national codes.
00:45:24.320 --> 00:45:29.199
Same for the NFPA codes, very good ones, very robust.
00:45:29.519 --> 00:45:35.119
Well, uh the in in Europe, the thing that comes to my mind is the Joint Research Center of European uh Commission.
00:45:35.119 --> 00:45:36.800
Yeah, JRC in Espray.
00:45:36.800 --> 00:45:44.719
Yeah, JJRC is doing this uh kind of exercise to link a lot of uh high-level fire professionals from Europe and exchange knowledge.
00:45:44.719 --> 00:45:52.400
Yeah, we we have just finished uh there's a big report that has been published uh two months ago about state of fire safety engineering in Europe by Jersey.
00:45:52.400 --> 00:45:57.119
The issue is uh with with EU, it's well it's not an issue, it's it's a feature.
00:45:57.119 --> 00:46:05.519
It's that the the safety and fire safety is within the national you know um decisions of each country.
00:46:05.519 --> 00:46:19.440
There's no yeah, there's there is no possibility to make a pan-European fire safety code, at least not now, without without uh changing the treaties, which is obviously impossible in this political uh hell we're going through.
00:46:19.440 --> 00:46:25.440
One I'll tell you about one document in Poland because I'm I am not really sure how common this is in Europe.
00:46:25.440 --> 00:46:32.400
We have this fire um fire scenario document, and fire scenario document is a very specific document that we do.
00:46:32.400 --> 00:46:45.760
So for every fire compartment in the building which you define, even even in more granularity, if you have multiple uh smoke compartments within the fire compartment, you would do it for every every single smoke compartment.
00:46:45.760 --> 00:46:53.599
You do a full description point by point of what is supposed to happen when the fire is detected.
00:46:53.599 --> 00:47:04.559
So you start with the tech, you don't you don't worry about uh how the fire starts, but you start with detection, and it gives you like a point by point every single item on the fire automation.
00:47:04.559 --> 00:47:12.159
Like the dampers have to shut in this zone, this dampers should open, this fan should start, these doors should close, this doors should open.
00:47:12.159 --> 00:47:34.079
Point by and and it's it's an exercise that that forces you to go through every single compartment of your building and uh define what is the expected you know performance of building systems, which then leads to ability to uh one um make matrix of operations of the systems that you have something to check against.
00:47:34.079 --> 00:47:41.599
And then also when you commission the building, you have a very exact document that the checklist of what is supposed to happen, what did happen, did it happen.
00:47:41.599 --> 00:47:49.840
I find this exercise as uh you know, you have a target level of safety you want to achieve in your building, but you are not yet there.
00:47:49.840 --> 00:47:52.239
It has to, you know, operate it in 100%.
00:47:52.239 --> 00:47:56.559
So this just gets you closer to the target, uh, if if everything operates.
00:47:56.559 --> 00:48:00.079
I'm not sure how how common and useful this document is uh elsewhere.
00:48:00.159 --> 00:48:14.719
But I think you know, it's the first time I hear about this, but I find it very how can I say that, instrumental, you know, like one, you know, like there is a sequence, and actually, this is you know like what happens in uh you know like disasters.
00:48:14.719 --> 00:48:20.239
You know, these are little, you know, like parts of the chain that they have broken.
00:48:20.239 --> 00:48:30.079
And I know it sounds very meticulous and it sounds sometimes boring and all that, but nobody ever said that engineering is not boring.
00:48:30.079 --> 00:48:32.320
Yeah, okay, sorry, let's be honest.
00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:34.079
You know, like it is a profession.
00:48:34.079 --> 00:48:39.360
We tend, you know, like as engineers to idolize it, but it is a boring profession as well.
00:48:39.360 --> 00:48:46.480
You know, like it is uh okay, the outcome sometimes, you know, like it is great, uh, but you have to go through the emotions.
00:48:46.480 --> 00:48:49.760
And what I hear is very, very useful.
00:48:49.760 --> 00:49:03.199
Because actually, like you said, I don't think it is about, you know, like um the dumper and all this, but it is about the fact that you have a checklist at the end that you know this, this, this, that, that, that, that, uh, you know what?
00:49:03.199 --> 00:49:04.559
You go back to check.
00:49:04.559 --> 00:49:07.440
And this goes back to what I said about maintenance.
00:49:07.440 --> 00:49:17.199
Because during maintenance, the main problem is that you try to maintain a part of the system without understanding what are the effects in the wider system.
00:49:17.199 --> 00:49:39.199
So in our case, you have a complete checklist, a questionnaire, let's say, that it is going to provide you all the answers to all the problems that you may have um created during the construction or during the life of the uh built environment project that you are running.
00:49:39.679 --> 00:49:45.679
Yeah, another aspect of this document that is very, very useful is that it links multiple technical designs.
00:49:45.679 --> 00:49:51.280
So if you want to say, okay, this fan starts, you have to understand what fans are in the building.
00:49:51.280 --> 00:49:52.480
Like you cannot say.
00:49:53.920 --> 00:50:14.800
Let me tell you that this reminds me of the times that I used to go more often to conferences, and I used to, you know, like I like science in general, so I try, you know, like I'm uh reading a lot, you know, like not only like scientific books, you know, like I'm very much interested in what is happening in the social context as well.
00:50:14.800 --> 00:50:30.639
And I was realizing that what uh our colleagues, fire engineering colleagues, sometimes they present it as a novelty, perhaps, you know, like in other strands of science existed, you know, like uh many years ago, and vice versa, of course.
00:50:30.639 --> 00:50:40.239
And this led me to realize that, like you are saying now, parts of science do not talk necessarily to each other.
00:50:40.239 --> 00:51:08.960
It doesn't necessarily mean that my science will talk to your science, and there are especially fundamental issues like mathematical um, you know, like uh parts and optimization and this and that that exist in other sciences, especially when you talk about modeling, but we do not adopt them in uh fire engineering because we don't know okay what happens in other.
00:51:08.960 --> 00:51:12.559
We tend to focus very much sometimes.
00:51:12.880 --> 00:51:31.920
This is exactly why you are here, because I would I I want to go through this exercise with you and think about is there anything in occupational loss prevention, etc., that we still are yet to adopt that that flourishes there, and for some reason we don't have it in fire science.
00:51:31.920 --> 00:51:36.480
For me, a ha moment when was when I learned about the safety cases, Piper Alpha, etc.
00:51:36.480 --> 00:51:37.599
This is brilliant.
00:51:37.599 --> 00:51:40.000
Like the colleagues in the UK now have them.
00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.480
I had an episode with the colleagues from OFR talking about this, but I don't have that in Poland.
00:51:44.480 --> 00:51:47.119
And I think, oh wow, this is this is an interesting concept.
00:51:47.119 --> 00:51:54.639
It allows me to really rethink a lot of a lot of things, uh, and a lot of problems come from the absence of thinking, really.
00:51:55.280 --> 00:51:58.639
There are a lot of things that uh sciences can borrow from each other.
00:51:58.639 --> 00:52:13.679
For instance, uh, like I said before, the a complete fire risk assessment should be compulsory as part of the occupational safety uh risk assessment, which is mostly focusing, you know, like on the processes and all that.
00:52:13.679 --> 00:52:25.360
But at the same time, there are elements of the occupational safety uh domain that would be um useful for the fire engineer.
00:52:25.360 --> 00:52:37.920
For instance, through a proper safety risk assessment, you are examining also the psychosocial issues, the behavioral patterns within the company.
00:52:37.920 --> 00:52:46.559
And come on, you know, like we said before, human factors, human factors are usually the outcome of psychosocial issues within the company.
00:52:46.559 --> 00:52:56.320
Okay, within the organization, if I can say the organization is ill use in the built environment, so yeah, there are so many things.
00:52:56.800 --> 00:52:59.840
Yeah, I I think that that's probably the biggest one.
00:52:59.840 --> 00:53:05.519
How could we account for this human perspective in in fire safety?
00:53:05.519 --> 00:53:16.719
You know, because the systems, the fire resistance minutes, the temperatures, the smoke, I can like calculate, I can to some extent maybe even control.
00:53:17.280 --> 00:53:20.159
But what I'm gonna do in five minutes, you will never know.
00:53:20.159 --> 00:53:48.239
Yeah, you know, it is you know, like we tend to think of silos, you know, like there is a silo that is working on uh uh mathematical modeling, there is another silo that is working on uh uh stochastic um methods, there is another one that talks about, but we don't tend to see various things, and different safety aspects need different methodologies.
00:53:48.239 --> 00:53:56.320
You cannot always have a mathematical issue, you cannot uh do a model of uh human behavior mathematically.
00:53:56.800 --> 00:54:00.719
This I need to revisit Erika Kouligoski with her models.
00:54:00.719 --> 00:54:05.519
Maybe she has something new to share with people that's uh 200 episodes ago.
00:54:05.519 --> 00:54:08.400
I've interviewed uh her about her previous work.
00:54:08.400 --> 00:54:19.599
Uh well, um anyway, George, this was uh a very interesting conversation on on how uh we can view on fire science from the safety science perspective.
00:54:19.599 --> 00:54:26.400
And uh I think uh if I had to summarize it's about the culture of fire safety which has to be built up.
00:54:26.400 --> 00:54:29.280
That's that's that's from scratch, yeah.
00:54:29.280 --> 00:54:33.840
Because I think we're pretty fine on the engineering side, but engineering is is not everything.
00:54:33.840 --> 00:54:37.519
Anyway, you would like to summarize it from your perspective?
00:54:37.840 --> 00:54:40.800
I was never good in providing titles and summaries.
00:54:40.800 --> 00:54:44.159
It has been a very enjoyable uh opportunity.
00:54:44.159 --> 00:54:46.320
Come in touch with my idol.
00:54:46.320 --> 00:54:50.079
Next time I think you will sign on my shirt.
00:54:50.079 --> 00:54:54.800
This is part of the education process that you are doing.
00:54:54.800 --> 00:55:03.920
Yeah, because learning about different cultures, learning about different methodologies, learning about different schools of thought is extremely important.
00:55:03.920 --> 00:55:09.760
And we shouldn't be stuck, and there is no, you know, like one solution that fits all.
00:55:09.760 --> 00:55:11.920
We have to be very open about this.
00:55:11.920 --> 00:55:20.960
I know that as scientists, you know, we have to defend our scientific domain and all, but yeah, uh it is time to open up.
00:55:20.960 --> 00:55:24.400
And I am very grateful for our discussion today.
00:55:24.719 --> 00:55:25.920
Thank you, thank you, George.
00:55:26.480 --> 00:55:28.320
Especially, you know, like before Christmas.
00:55:28.400 --> 00:55:34.880
So it's gonna air in the in the new year, so we can take this opportunity to wish everyone a very great.
00:55:35.440 --> 00:55:41.599
Then we can celebrate Christmas without uh, you know, like trying to get come close to us, yes.
00:55:41.840 --> 00:55:45.679
Okay, so let's wish the listeners happy year, happy new year, guys and girls.
00:55:45.679 --> 00:55:47.599
It's it's gonna be a 2026.
00:55:47.599 --> 00:55:50.719
I hope it's gonna be amazing for fire safety and safety science.
00:55:51.039 --> 00:55:52.719
Merry Christmas and happy new year.
00:55:52.719 --> 00:55:53.840
Thank you so much.
00:55:54.239 --> 00:55:54.880
And that's it.
00:55:54.880 --> 00:55:56.000
Thank you for listening.
00:55:56.000 --> 00:56:04.960
This was the very last episode I've recorded in 2025, basically, the last thing I've done in the year before going to celebrate my Christmas.
00:56:04.960 --> 00:56:11.039
And it was uh interviewing George was an extremely pleasant way uh to finish the year.
00:56:11.039 --> 00:56:19.760
I must say, George is such a character, and I am just absolutely astounded in his ability to speak Polish.
00:56:19.760 --> 00:56:28.559
But outside of knowing Polish, uh, George has some other qualities.
00:56:28.559 --> 00:56:39.280
He's been with safety science for two decades, and uh he clearly built up an image of how does one obtain safety.
00:56:39.280 --> 00:56:44.800
And uh what he says about building a safety culture and educating the next generation.
00:56:44.800 --> 00:57:03.199
I mean, this is very intriguing, important, but at the same time kind of outside of the reach of you know fire safety engineers, the ones that build buildings, the ones that work with architects, the ones that deliver you know tangible fire safety on your everyday projects.
00:57:03.199 --> 00:57:07.440
It's like uh more political, more high level.
00:57:07.440 --> 00:57:21.199
But at the same time, if you think about it, how many times our systems fail, our solutions are incorrect if someone acts, behaves wrongly in the building.
00:57:21.199 --> 00:57:28.639
That's such a common cause that's that a single wrong behavior can cancel years and years of good design.
00:57:28.639 --> 00:57:54.800
Hence, I think uh we need to consider ourselves as a part of the safety culture, one very important part of the safety culture, but we probably should not live in a complete ignorance of the other aspects and this this low-level education, these uh long-lasting processes to teach the society how to use the fire safety features.
00:57:54.800 --> 00:57:55.920
That's that's the that's it.
00:57:55.920 --> 00:58:05.360
The society has no idea how to use stuff that we design for them, they have no idea how detection works, how sprinkler works, how smoke extraction works.00:58:05.360 --> 00:58:13.679
And without this knowledge, they cannot really fully benefit from the achievements of fire safety engineering that we bring to them.00:58:13.679 --> 00:58:26.000
So, as trivial as it may sound that we need a low-level approach, you know, education in kindergartens and primary schools, we need a society-oriented education.00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:43.039
As basic and obvious it sounds, it really is a critical element of building uh fire safety engineering as it is something that thrives between the architecture, engineering, and social sciences, uh, whether we like it or not.00:58:43.039 --> 00:58:47.840
And um I think this is a conclusion I left with this interview with George.00:58:47.840 --> 00:58:54.800
I wonder what are your thoughts on the subject on how do we achieve something you could call uh a fire safety culture.00:58:54.800 --> 00:59:05.199
Uh, that would be it for today's episode, and I am uh looking forward for next week to see you here once again, same day, same time.00:59:05.199 --> 00:59:06.079
Cheers.00:59:06.079 --> 00:59:06.639
Bye.
