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Abstract
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Large outdoor fires present a risk to the built environment. Examples often in the international media reports are wildfires that spread into communities, referred to as Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires. WUI fires have destroyed communities throughout the world and are a growing problem in fire safety science. Other examples are large urban fires, including those that have occurred after earthquakes.
Over the past several decades, fire safety science research has spent a great deal of effort to understand fire dynamics within buildings. Research into large outdoor fires, and how to potentially mitigate the loss of structures in such fires, lags behind other areas of fire safety science research [1]. Fire spread in large outdoor fires is incredibly complex, involving the interaction of topography, weather, and fuels. At the same time, common characteristics between fire spread in WUI fires and urban fires have not been fully exploited. Once a wildland fire reaches a community and ignites structures, structure-structure fire spread can occur under similar mechanisms as in urban fire spread.
On June 11, 2017, a workshop, sponsored by the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS), was held. Seven panelists from around the world presented regional overviews of the large outdoor fire problem related to the built environment in their respective regions. Presentations explored common characteristics between these fires and were arranged as: European View, Asian View, North American View, South American View, and Oceania View.
A significant discussion outcome of the workshop was the desire of the participants to make this topic a permanent working group under the umbrella of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS). So far, this has been done for only one other topic, the Measurement and Computation of Fire Phenomena...
Language: en |