Episodes
May 6, 2025
200 - Façade flammability across scales and standards with Guillermo Rein and Matt Bonner
Episode 200! And for this special episode, I've travelled to London to interview Prof. Guillermo Rein and Dr Matt Bonner on a piece of research carried out at Imperial College London, with the experiments performed in our laboratory at the ITB. In this episode, we discuss the concept of flammabilit…
April 29, 2025
199 - Commercial Timber Guidebook with Danny Hopkin and Luis Gonzalez Avila
We know a whole lot more about mass timber in fire than we did a few years ago (even when I’ve just started the podcast 199 episodes back …). But is this knowledge widely used in engineering practice? Is it used in the same w...
April 23, 2025
198 - Waste and recycling fires and how to fight them with Ryan Fogelman
The devastating impact of waste and recycling industry fires costs approximately $2.5 billion annually in the US and Canada alone, with lithium-ion batteries causing roughly 50% of these incidents. In this episode with Ryan F...
April 15, 2025
197 - Fire spread through external walls pt. 2 with FSRI
When wildfire threatens neighbourhoods with closely-spaced homes, what determines whether flames leap from one structure to the next? The FSRI research team - Rebekah Schrader, Joseph Willi, Daniel Gorham and Gavin Horn - joi...
April 9, 2025
196 - Fire spread through external walls pt. 1 with FSRI
In this podcast episode, we host Rebekah Schrader, Joseph Willi, Daniel Gorham and Gavin Horn, all from the FSRI, to cover their recent experimental research on fire spread through external walls. This is part 1 of the interv...
April 2, 2025
195 - Fire Safety Cases with Chris Mayfield and Martyn Ramsden
The UK's Building Safety Act requires high-risk buildings to maintain comprehensive fire safety cases - living documents that identify hazards, mitigate risks, and establish clear accountability for building safety. This is t...
March 26, 2025
194 - Playing with batteries with Xinyan Huang
Professor Xinyan Huang from Hong Kong Polytechnic University shares his expertise on battery fires and the various experimental methods researchers use to trigger thermal runaway events under controlled conditions. • Terminol...
March 18, 2025
193 - Fire Fundamentals pt. 15 - Extinguishing systems with Bogdan Racięga
Welcome to another Fire Fundamentals. This time the episode is focused on various extinguishing technologies. Invited guest - Bogdan Racięga, Director at Baltic Fire Laboratory and expert in fire protection systems breaks dow...
March 12, 2025
192 - Fire Fundamentals pt. 14 - Jet fan systems for car parks
Jet-fan systems effectively control smoke in car parks by creating directed airflows that transport smoke from one point to another, similar to how longitudinal ventilation works in tunnels. These systems offer cost-effective...
March 5, 2025
191 - Committee participation with Birgitte Messerschmidt and Kees Both
This episode explores the invaluable contributions of community participation in fire safety technical committees. Joining committees is not just about sharing expertise; it’s a journey that transforms careers and fosters gro...
Feb. 26, 2025
190 - Car park fires review with Zahir
With the emergence of electric vehicles, fire safety and dynamics have entered a new domain, raising crucial questions about existing protocols, design fires and data gaps. Today, our Wojciech Wegrzyński welcomes Zahir, Assoc...
Feb. 19, 2025
189 - Simple things that work
This episode emphasises the value of focusing on simple things in fire safety engineering, something we somehow miss when we go too deep into the technical details of our projects. I've looked at eight different aspects of fi...
Feb. 11, 2025
188 - Fire Fundamentals pt. 13 - Porous solid fuels
In this episode of Fire Fundamentals, together with Dr Sara McAllister, we dwell on how stuff burns... And it is far from an easy question. While the general theme of the episodes is porous fuels, we discuss them from differe...
Feb. 5, 2025
187 - Smouldering of preserved timber with Wenxuan Wu
Can a tiny amount of bio-protective coating completely change the fire behaviour of mass timber logs? If you asked me that some time ago, I would say it would probably be neutral. Can a 0.5 x 0.5 m free-standing log of timber...
Jan. 29, 2025
186 - Egressibility: a paradigm shift in evacuation research with Enrico Ronchi
If we truly want to account for the population at a disadvantage in evacuation, there is only this much we can do with the current approach... Pre-evacuation time distributions, walking speeds, and so on only tell us a part o...
Jan. 22, 2025
185 - Recap on wildfire science
In the aftermath of the LA Pacific Palisades Fire, I've decided that instead of inviting one expert to discuss the event, I will give a voice back to those who already participated in the Fire Science Show and explained this ...
Jan. 15, 2025
184 - Cost-benefit analysis in structural fire safety with Thomas Gernay and Chenzi Ma
This episode delves into the financial aspects of fire safety in building design, highlighting the balance between cost and effectiveness. My guests - prof. Thomas Gernay and Chenzi Ma from Johns Hopkins University share insi...
Jan. 8, 2025
183 - Innovation and fire safety with Vincent Brannigan
History repeats itself. A new thing is invented. We learn about it, understand it, and apply measures to capture its behaviour and regulate it. And then another new thing is invented. The measures we used start failing us, an...
Dec. 18, 2024
182 - Bias in fire research
Fire is a highly contextualized problem; therefore, there is no such thing as an unbiased or "objective" fire experiment. It is a thing that many researchers would understand but is very rarely pointed out. Where it is not a ...
Dec. 11, 2024
181 - Regulatory regimes with Vincent Brannigan
I just drove 500 km to have a conversation with Professor Vincent Brannigan from the University of Maryland, a very unique expert who combines law with fire engineering. In this discussion, we go into the complexities of buil...
Dec. 4, 2024
180 - Fire Fundamentals pt. 12 - Pressurization systems
In this episode of fire science fundamentals, we cover the pressurisation systems. These are smoke control solutions used to prevent smoke from accessing protected spaces, by creating an overpressure in those spaces. Although...
Nov. 27, 2024
179 - Assurance in fire safety with Abhishek Chhabra
Discover the hidden backbone of fire safety with assurance industry expert Abhishek Chhabra as we unravel the essential frameworks that keep our buildings safe and sound. We explore the vital role of standards, accreditations...
Nov. 20, 2024
178 - Origin stories of fire prevention and firefighting with Michał Stachowicz
Happy 200th birthday, Scottish Fire and Rescue Services!!! I'm a bit late to the party. Still, I've done my best to celebrate your anniversary in the best way I can - by giving homage to the amazing fire safety engineering an...
Nov. 13, 2024
177 - Physics-Based Modelling of Fire Spread with Francesco Restuccia
Wildfire modelling is quite complicated when you wish to integrate different fuel packages with different properties in 'real' environmental conditions while managing the transition to/from smouldering. We have a model for ea...