Risk, Performance Based Engineering And Modelling Episodes

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...

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 solving the flows within fires. But this power comes at a price - knowledge, resources, time... Sometimes we lack some of these (or all) and we turn the power tool into a generator of beautiful images that are hardly any representation of the physics of the fire... In this e...

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 science. This is why I think its shameful it does not receive the same recognition today. With Colleen we go deep into the zone models, discussing the tool itself and the ways to adapt it to current needs. You will learn how zone models evolved, and what makes them really usefu...

Everyone is talking about AI, but how can we really use it in fire safety engineering and firefighting? Prof Xinyan Huang of HK PolyU will explain his research in this field, and we can consider it as a time travel to the future. We touch on the ideas of AI and machine learning, and what does it really do (and what it does not do). We also investigate Xinyan's most recent research where AI was successfully applied to investigate the location of a fire in a tunnel and predict the smoke layer heig...

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 to use AI to help us in future. His research has started few months before the Grenfell, and the tragedy has definitely made more eyes follow his studies. I think he has passed the test and provided useful knowledge that was a starting point for multiple follow up projects....

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 Gabriele Vigne. We discuss the overall use of tenability criteria in fire science, and in more details, the use of visibility in smoke. --- LinkedIn Discussion thread --- https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6807702437852442624 --- Links --- Follow Gabriele o...