Fun Episodes Recommendations Episodes

There is no universal answer to the question of how law and testing regimes should be set up. Sometimes, we build up our law after a huge tragedy, making sure that the same cause will not be of harm in the future. Sometimes, we act proactively, trying to build robust solutions so that all foreseen threats are minimized... But it is never without a flaw. And even if the system is flawless, one can hardly expect today's solutions to answer the problems of the future world. But we need those laws, ...

Three months ago I saw a video of some sort of an electric scooter going off in someone's residential building. That person had absolutely no chance of controlling that fire. I guess they have escaped, but it must have been severe fire damage to their home. Then, I listened to an excellent webinar by IFAB (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vir4_1qSSc) where for the first time I've seen useful measurements of HRR in such a fire... and they are horrifying. A fire in a range of ¬1 MW is in many case...

In my first episode, I mentioned that I'm doing this podcast to preserve some amazing conversations and share them with a larger audience, as sometimes it is a huge waste of interesting thoughts that remain just between the few people participating in a talk. This part of the podcast mission is what I'm trying to achieve with today's episode. I had the privilege to be a part of an amazing discussion between fire science giants Steve Gwynne from Movement Strategies and Mike Spearpoint from OFR, w...

Let's start another mini-series! This time 'fire fundamentals' where we are going to learn some basics from the world's best. It is usually fascinating to do that! Not sure how you feel about it but I would kill for a chance to listen to the principles of fire science from Quintiere or Drysdale, even though I give these lectures on my own... In this first episode, I've invited dr Rory Hadden - an emerging legend of fire from the University of Edinburgh, to discuss some basics of flame and combu...

Has it ever crossed your mind how would our discipline look like, if we did not have Fire Dynamics Simulator? Maybe you had an opportunity to discuss CFD with colleagues from other disciplines, to find their faces in shock and awe that the fire community actually has its own, FREE AND OPEN SOURCE, validated and fully recognized solver? A testimony to the impact of FDS may be the citation count on its user guide, which has recently exceeded 5.000 citations! The FDS code is something special and o...

Dear Terrestial Fire Engineers, let me take you on a journey that will make you experience fire engineering like nothing on our planet. Because in fact, it is the fire engineering of spacecraft for their operations in a zero-gravity environment. The environment in which the most fundamental aspects of fire engineering (think about smoke cannot go up when there is no up!) are being challenged. Where fire physics is completely different, and where things that are necessary for humans (oxygen, clot...

This amount of heat flux for this amount of time, routine conditions, check, done. This is how I used to do my engineering and tenability assessment related to heat stress... up till today when prof Denisse Smith and prof Gavin Horn took me on a bumpy journey into the physiology of humans in fire conditions and in personal protective equipment (PPE). It is astonishing, that the stress on the body of the firefighter may be as great from the fire as from their own heat generation due to work being...

How much the fire scene at households has changed over the last 30 years? Why modern furniture burns worse than one made with wood, cotton and other natural materials? And what does that mean to firefighting? What challenges do modern firefighters face fighting residential fires... There is so many questions to be asked about residential fires, and in this episode, I answer a lot of them with the firefighting research legends - Dan Madrzykowski of the UL Fire Safety Research Institute and profes...

Have you wondered how fire science started? But I mean the real real start... not 1666 one, nor the one when we've started to build furnaces... The start when the first evolutionary ancestor of homo sapiens figured out this warm bright thing could be used to process food. The start when this bright thing was protected and used intentionally. The bright thing that was so important for our kind, that the proof for this relationship can be found literally in our anatomy... The best way to study th...

I once said the future looks stupid... but after this discussion with Arnold Dix, I know - future is exciting. And for Fire Safety Engineers and others involved in fire protection - the future seems to be super exciting! In this episode, we let go and try to discuss the future tech in the world of tunnelling. From autonomous vehicles in tiny (and seems a bit dangerous) tunnels, McDonnaldization of TBM's, Hyperloops to city concepts build all the way around humans (and tunnels!). This is a future...

A few episodes ago I called for better communication in fire safety. And in this episode, tunnel fire safety legend Prof. Arnold Dix is answering that, by teaching us the ways of the 'sustainability' talk - how to communicate better having the global sustainability goals in mind? But it is not only a way of communication. It is a mindset. And it is a powerful one, leading to a rethink of the concept of safety and how one is delivered. A rejuvenating perspective in which we are mindful of our sol...

Episode 50! Time to celebrate, and for this one we have a surprise. A mysterious host takes over the show to interview a wind and fire modelling celebrity... Ok, this should be enough to not reveal everything once the show notes get auto-posted on all social media :) I am super happy for multiple reasons. You guys were with me 50 times on my way to share fire science with everyone who wants to listen. You have downloaded my content 25.000 times. And finally, I get to share with you some of my o...

Have you ever been fascinated by the capabilities of AI? Did you wonder how the heck can an algorithm beat humans in repetitive tasks? Or make multi-level correlations that we would never be able to figure out? I was as well. And I felt the urge to learn more about this technology, in a way to not be left out when everyone plays with their new toys... But at the same time, I felt this feeling of overwhelm and confusion about this technology. What exactly is it, where to start... Then the wall of...

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 design? That is a problem with (a) the definition of the profession and (b) the definition of the core competencies related to the profession. And both of these issues are close to the heart of my guest, Jimmy Jönsson, Director at JVVA in Spain and a member of SFPE Board of Dire...

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 episode, I'm hosting a guest who spent three decades researching what performance-based fire safety engineering is, and what it could be. And I'm not completely sure if I like the answers I got from this talk. However, based on my experience of 17 interviews with world-class fir...

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 shape, size, compartmentation, location of the openings in the building - things that are fundamental to the compartment fire dynamics. The second reason is that they make the decisions at the most infant stage of the building construction. When everything is reversible, an...

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 phenomena that drive these fires, and are these the same phenomena across the scales? These are the questions I had in mind when starting the interview with a rising star of Wildfire Science – Dr Sara McAllister of the USDA Forest Service. Together with Sara we go into a jou...

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 discuss how biases can be used to understand known behaviours and model human behaviour in a more realistic way. A lot of focus is placed on the evacuation modelling, and how the decision-making processes are implemented in the computer models... And in the end, we talk a bit ...

Guillermo Rein is a recipient of ERC Consildator Grant on smouldering megafires. The most challenging source of founding, meant for the projects that can truly change the world. And his HAZE project is just like that - to study a phenomenon that accounts for more than 13% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions and takes the lives of thousands (millions?) of people every year. In this episode you will learn about the haze fire chemistry and emissions, they ways to detect them and the directions for the ...