You are invited to the 11th Conference on Performance-Based Codes and Fire Safety Design Methods. This conference has an established reputation globally as the premier international event for professionals involved in fire safety engineering, regulations development and enforcement, testing, standards of development and engineering design methods.
Starting in 1996, SFPE, along with several partner organizations, has held a biennial conference to showcase the state of the art in performance-based code approaches and engineering design methods. This edition of the conference has been co-organized and supported locally by the Polish SFPE Chapter and the Main School of Fire Service, Warsaw. We are especially grateful to the following members of the 2016 Conference Program Committee:
- Piotr Tofilo, Ph.D., The Main School of Fire Service / Polish SFPE Chapter, (Chair)
- Marcin Cisek, Protect T.Cisek i Wsp. Sp. J.
- Melissa Franco, Meetings & Education Manager, SFPE
- Peter Johnson, FSFPE, Principal, Arup
- Chris Jelenewicz, PE, FSFPE, Technical Director, SFPE
- William E. Koffel Jr., PE FSFPE, President, Koffel Associates
- Bart Merci, Ph.D., Professor, Ghent University
- Vladimir Mozer, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, University of Zilina
- Armelle Muller, Director – Fire Research Laboratory, CNPP
- Guillermo Rein, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer, Imperial College London
- Ai Sekizawa, Dr. Eng., PE, FSFPE, Professor, Tokyo University of Science
- José Torero, Ph.D., FSFPE, Professor, University of Queensland
Presentations address newly emerging technologies, as well as perspectives on approaches that have worked well, and approaches that have not worked as well as originally desired.
Don't miss out on this opportunity to register on the premier global event in advancements in engineered fire protection design practices!
Kathleen H. Almand, PE, FSFPE, Vice President, Research, National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)
Using Data to Enhance Fire and Life Safety Inspection and Enforcement Programs
Fire and life safety inspection and enforcement is a key activity that contributes to community risk reduction. Fire departments in the United States utilize a range of data sources to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their inspection and enforcement programs. Depending on the resources available, this data is increasingly being collected, analyzed, and utilized for implementing important community risk mitigation strategies. Today, there is a broad range in the sophistication of data-based information tools, and the level of their implementation varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
The Foundation has undertaken a project to benchmark and share best practices for data gathering used to inform code enforcement agencies in developing effective fire and life safety inspection and enforcement programs. The expected outcomes of this activity are:
- Increased understanding of the benefits of the application of data to inspection and enforcement programs in reducing community risk through real world examples;
- Expanded awareness of currently used data sets, tools and best practices designed to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of inspection and enforcement programs;
- Identification of gaps in current data sets and information tools;
- Opportunities for standardization of data gathering tools and application strategies; and
- Guidance and inputs for NFPA Technical Committees.
This presentation will present the results of a workshop which brought together 16 different U.S. fire departments and service providers who are engaged in this activity and who utilize a range of technologies and tools to accomplish it to share information on electronic tools and strategies and identify best practices and gaps.
Ricky Carvel, Ph.D., Lecturer, University of Edinburgh
Ventilation for Smoke Control, Fire Control and Life Safety in Tunnels
Ventilation has been the primary fire safety system used in tunnels for over a hundred years. Often it is the only safety system available for tunnel operators to activate during fire incidents. Yet the effects of actually blowing on fires in tunnels are still poorly understood. The ideal objectives for smoke control may be achieved by using the ventilation in one manner, while the ideal objectives for fire control often require the ventilation to be used in a different manner. Occasionally, not using the ventilation at all is the best option for ensuring the safety of all passengers during a tunnel fire incident. But a ventilation system cannot be used in three different ways at once. This presentation will explore research into the interactions between ventilation and fire and offer suggestions for the best way to use ventilation during certain tunnel fire incidents.
Charles Fleischmann, Ph.D., FSFPE, Professor, University of Canterbury
Update on the SFPE Design Fire Scenarios Standard
This presentation will provide an update on the SFPE Design Fire Scenarios Standards-Making committee. The committee has been focusing on creating of occupancy specific design fire scenarios that are developed following a robust and transparent three step process of reviewing the available fire incident statistics, analysing existing experimental data and the collective judgement of the committee. Examples of the draft scenarios will be discussed and the audience will have the opportunity to provide feedback on the committee’s direction.
Björn Karlsson, Ph.D., Director General, Iceland Construction Authority
Challenges Facing the Government Official – Examples of How Fire Safety and Risk Engineering Methods Can Solve a Wide Variety of Problems
William E. Koffel Jr., PE, FSFPE, President, Koffel Associates, Inc.
Am I Old School or Am I New School?
Daniel Nilsson, Ph.D., FSE, Department of Fire Safety Engineering and Systems Safety, Lund University
Making Buildings Smarter: Sensor Based Monitoring of People Location and Movement During Evacuation
Knowledge about the location and movement of people during real fire evacuation can potentially be used to make buildings safer. This is particularly true for buildings where large numbers of people gather, e.g., arenas, underground facilities, etc. Information about people's location and movement can be used to make evacuation more effective, e.g., by directing people to appropriate exits either by staff intervention or using dynamic way-finding systems. However, people monitoring within a building requires sensors. Some of these sensors already exist in new smart buildings, e.g., sensors linked to demand-based ventilation systems or lighting, and others might need to be installed in future buildings to make them even smarter. The aim is to present some ideas of how data on people location and movement in buildings can be collected in non-invasive ways, using both sensors commonly found today in smart buildings and using new low-cost techniques.
Guillermo Rein, Ph.D., Reader in Thermal Energy, Department of Mechanical Engineering of Imperial College and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Fire Technology.
Travelling Fires for the Structural Design of Buildings
Our understanding of building behaviour in case of fire has significantly increased over the last decades, in particular after the full-scale Cardington tests in 1999. However, most of the current understanding and consequently the design codes are based on the often unrealistic assumption of uniform fire conditions within the whole enclosure (uniform temperature and also uniform burning rate). This assumption is especially wrong in the case of large open-plan compartments, where travelling fires have been observed instead. Travelling fires do not cover the whole enclosure but spread locally. Although such fire behaviour may seem obvious now, it was only noted as possibly of importance to structural design after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York (2001). This keynote presents the progress to date on the innovative engineering concept of Travelling Fires Methodology (TFM) which has been developed to take into account this non-uniform fire behavior in structural design. The concept has already been applied on dozens of iconic buildings in the UK like the New Ludgate or the refurbishment of Battersea Power Station. The research was sponsored by SFPE Educational and Scientific Foundation, Arup, EPSRC and CERIB, and has received the 2015 Best Fire Research Project from the UK Chapter of SFPE.
Piotr Tofilo, Ph.D., The Main School of Fire Service / Polish SFPE Chapter
Performance-Based Approaches for External Fire Spread and Thermal Radiation Calculations
Christopher Wieczorek, Ph.D., Group Manager Fire & Explosion Protection, FM Global
A Synergistic Approach between Modeling and Experimentation to Develop Fire Protection Recommendations within Codes and Standards
The proliferation of computational fluid dynamic models within the fire protection engineering community is driving new risk mitigation recommendations. In many instances, these recommendations are being implemented without the important aspect of proper testing and validation. This keynote presentation will discuss the synergistic approach for using FireFOAM (a physics-based, open-source model for simulating fire suppression) and appropriately designed and scaled fire experiments to achieve robust, optimized designs. This methodology is being used to develop protection solutions for both in-rack sprinklers designs and more recently high storage of roll paper. The strategically coupled modeling and experimentation approach is allowing a suite of efficient and cost effective solutions to be developed and incorporated within codes and standards, where previously only single discrete protection points were generated through trail-and-error large-scale testing.