Fire Science, Engineering And Education Episodes
The current hot-topics in fire science and engineering
April 6, 2022
045 - Foundations of fire safety with Ruben van Coile and Danny Hopkin
How does one decide when a building is fire safe? That is a real hell of a question to answer! Is it when no harm can occur? But such a condition can never be fulfilled... there is always a meteor waiting around the corner to...
March 23, 2022
043 - Some neglected areas in fire science with Vyto Babrauskas
It is always a pleasure to interview a true legend of fire safety. And when the topic of the interview is their thoughts on neglected areas of our discipline, based on almost five decades of experience? This must end up great...
March 16, 2022
042 - Unsafe environment of post fire scenes with Gavin Horn
We all understand the dangers of smoke inhalation in fires. But what about the site of the fire a few days after it was put out? It looks clean, maybe even lost the smell... Is it something to worry about, or you can rush str...
March 9, 2022
041 - Sprinkler and safety systems reliability with Arnstein Fedoy
How reliable are sprinkler systems? Is it 100%? Is it 95%? Maybe it is 88%... actually, whatever the number is, do we truly understand what does it represent? What does it mean that a sprinkler has succeeded and what does it ...
Dec. 15, 2021
031 - Suppressing tunnel fires with water mist with Johny Jessen
Can water mist be used in tunnels? I wondered that for a long time, and with every tunnel project, many questions around this issue were piling in my head. When dealing with large infrastructure projects you really need to wo...
Dec. 1, 2021
029 -Busses, flammability and an unknown force holding good solutions back... with Anja Hofmann-Böllinghaus
This is not a fun episode. It starts with a tragedy, that fueled a whole field of research. Continues into disbelief, that one aspect of fire safety can be at the same chosen as the sole foundation of fire safety within a bra...
Nov. 3, 2021
025 - Structural fire engineering with engineered timber with Felix Wiesner
In Episode 18 we have touched on the important topic of fire performance of engineered wood and its wide use in the modern built environment. Today, we follow up on this subject with Dr Felix Wiesner from the University of Q...
Oct. 27, 2021
024 - Who's a Fire Safety Engineer with Jimmy Jönsson
Who is a Fire Safety Engineer? And when do you become one? How do you know the person on the other side of the table at the project meeting has the necessary competencies to judge fire safety solutions of a building you desig...
Oct. 13, 2021
022 - Combustion, fluid mechanics and fire safety engineering with Michael Gollner
https://firelab.berkeley.edu/ this is the place you need to go! Ignition at different slope angles. Firebrand spotting. Fire whirls. What does connect these various fire phenomena? They are all driven by fluid dynamics and ca...
Sept. 29, 2021
020 - Fire Safety Engineering as a socio-technical system with Brian Meacham
Do you sometimes feel that fire safety engineering is not making a footprint as it should? With all our knowledge, models, technology...why do huge fires exist? Why fire is such a threat to billions of humans? In today's epis...
Sept. 21, 2021
019 - Modelling human behaviour in wildfire evacuation with Erica Kuligowski
There is plenty of fire engineers who think they are modelling human behaviour... Some claim they can do it... And there is very, very few who actually did and succeeded with it. One of them is today's guest, Dr Erica Kuligow...
Sept. 15, 2021
018 - Engineered timber with Danny Hopkin
Engineered timber is on a trajectory to become the construction material of the future. However, on that pathway there stands the fire issue. Wood burns, it is inevitable. This is something we must accept, and learn to work a...
Aug. 25, 2021
015 - Global view on the fire safety from a starchitect perpective with Benjamin Ralph
Have you ever wondered who truly has the most power over the fire safety of a building? In my opinion, the answer is very simple - the Architect. This is due to two reasons. First is that the architect can affect the building...
Aug. 18, 2021
014 - A joyrney through the scales of fire phenomena with Sara McAllister
Have you ever wondered how is a fire of a match or candle different from a wildfire? Or maybe rather, why is it different? What is it, that makes the fires at different scales behave in such a different manner? What are the p...
Aug. 11, 2021
013 - On the use and abuse of CFD in fire engineering with Wolfram Jahn
We are living in a kind of weird time, where the most complex tool we have is at the same time the most commonly used (and abused one). The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling has brought us amazing capabilities in s...
Aug. 4, 2021
012 - Science, Industry, Legislators. How do we make them work together on a fire safe world? - Kees Both
In this episode, I had the pleasure and privilege to host dr Kees Both, the Technical Manager of Standards & Regulations in Etexgroup. Kees wanted to become a suspension bridge engineer, but his route went through a fire lab,...
July 28, 2021
011 - Why temperature is so easy to measure but so hard to interpret?
What is the single most measured thing in fire science? The answer is easy - temperature. We use it everywhere - from learning material properties in TGA's to expressing conditions in compartment fires. We use it at the same ...
July 13, 2021
009 - Cognitive biases and decision making in evacuation with Michael Kinsey
Why do we take certain decisions during an evacuation process? How do we choose the evacuation route? These are often affected by cognitive biases, which is the main theme of today's episode. With Dr Michael Kinsey we will di...
July 7, 2021
008 - Zone modelling is not dead with Colleen Wade
Zone modelling is a technique introduced in 1970's and 80's that has changed fire science. In my personal opinion, along with oxygen calorimetry and the development of FDS it may have been the most impactful tool of fire scie...
June 23, 2021
006 - EV's, rapid fires and car parks
In Episode 6, our host, dr Wojciech Wegrzynski, explains his experiences with modelling rapidly growing fires in car parks. Such fire growth may be typical for EV fires that originate in battery and pose a different set of ch...
June 16, 2021
Battery fires with Roeland Bisschop
Today I've talked to Roeland Bisschop, Project Manager in RISE, about his first-hand experience with battery fires. Roeland explained to me how do battery fires look from a scientific perspective, and how my perspective was k...
June 9, 2021
Facade fires and AI with Matt Bonner
Dr Matthew Bonner of the Imperial College London is one of the leading scientists touching on the subject of the fire safety of facades. His flavour is tackling the complexity through big data analyses and developing new ways...
June 2, 2021
Tenability criteria with Gabriele Vigne
How do you know if a building is safe in fire or not? Usually through performing ASET-RSET analyses, in which you determine how and when the tenability criteria in the building are breached. This is what I discuss with dr Gab...