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- Bjelland, Henrik, et al.
(author)
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Tunnel fire safety management and systems thinking : Adapting engineering practice through regulations and education
- 2024
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In: Fire safety journal. - : Elsevier BV. - 0379-7112 .- 1873-7226. ; 146
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Society is changing ever faster, and tunnels are complex systems where performance is affected by many different stakeholders. These conditions suggest that safety management needs to be proactive and based on a systems perspective that acknowledges socio-technical theories. Although systems thinking principles are foundational in overarching European regulations and goals, system principles generally don’t affect tunnel fire safety design principles or engineering practice. In the countries investigated in this study, tunnel fire safety management (TFSM) builds on experience-based and risk management-based principles that are optimized independently system by system. This is usually done with limited consideration of how these systems are interconnected and affect the overall tunnel system. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how systems thinking could support existing engineering practice. The work presented in this article is the outcome of a collaboration between fire safety researchers and practitioners from five countries and three continents. Through three workshops, current TFSM principles have been compiled and discussed. It is suggested that tunnel safety regulations be redesigned to strengthen the ability of engineers to work in design teams using systems thinking principles.
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- McNamee, Margaret, et al.
(author)
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Conceptual Basis for a Sustainable and Fire Resilient Built Environment
- 2023
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In: Fire Technology. - 0015-2684.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Fire has the potential to create significant impacts on the built environment. Managing this impact is sometimes pursued without consideration of the interface between the natural and technological worlds. However, as society has recognized the impacts of technological development on environmental sustainability, the need for sustainable and resilient development has emerged. To facilitate sustainable and resilient development, technological choices should embrace a sociotechnical systems approach that considers the interactions of society, technology and institutions, and their interactions with the environment. Failure to do so can result in unintended consequences. Society’s technological choices aimed at increasing sustainability of buildings, such as the desire to reduce building carbon footprints or improve the use of renewable energy systems, can have significant impacts on fire resilience if not considered holistically. To better understand and comprehensively address and mitigate intolerable fire risk associated with choices driven by sustainability objectives, a balanced and holistic systems approach is needed. To this end, a framework to foster a systems-oriented approach to improving both sustainability and fire resilience, in tandem, to create a Sustainable and Fire Resilient Built Environment (SAFR-BE) is presented.
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| 5. |
- McNamee, Margaret, et al.
(author)
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IAFSS agenda 2030 for a fire safe world
- 2019
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In: Fire Safety Journal. - : Elsevier BV. - 0379-7112. ; 110
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The International Association of Fire Safety Science (IAFSS) is comprised of members from some 40 countries. This paper presents the Association's thinking, developed by the Management Committee, concerning pressing research needs for the coming 10 years presented as the IAFSS Agenda 2030 for a Fire Safe World. The research needs are couched in terms of two broad Societal Grand Challenges: (1) climate change, resiliency and sustainability and (2) population growth, urbanization and globalization. The two Societal Grand Challenges include significant fire safety components, that lead both individually and collectively to the need for a number of fire safety and engineering research activities and actions. The IAFSS has identified a list of areas of research and actions in response to these challenges. The list is not exhaustive, and actions within actions could be defined, but this paper does not attempt to cover all future needs.
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| 6. |
- Mcnamee, Robert, et al.
(author)
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Environmental Benefits of Rapid Fire Detection
- 2023
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A study has been undertaken to investigate the environmental implication of early detection of a fire for the environmental impact of the fire when taking into account the global impact of the intervention itself and the need to replace building and contents as a function of the size and duration of the fire. The various scenarios investigated show that the greatest benefit is gained if a fire is detected early and can be extinguished while small without the intervention of the fire service. Significant savings can also be made if a sprinkler can keep the fire small while the fire service is on their way to the fire so that they meet a small fire which they can rapidly extinguish once they are on the scene. The methodology is based on an assumption of a single enclosure size, a generic fire load, detection and response. Future work should investigate different building typologies, fire loads and response types.
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| 7. |
- Meacham, Brian J., et al.
(author)
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A holistic framework for development and assessment of risk-informed performance-based building regulation
- 2021
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In: Fire and Materials. - : Wiley. - 0308-0501 .- 1099-1018. ; 45:6, s. 757-771
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Fire safety provisions in building regulation are about managing risk. In order to appropriately characterize and incorporate risk measures into building regulation, it is helpful to view building regulatory systems (BRS) as complex socio-technical systems (STS), wherein there are interactions between institutions, technology and people, which ideally work together to mitigate risk to a societally tolerable level. A description of BRS as STS and how to assess the efficacy of the BRS in managing fire risk is presented. To illustrate how STS concepts can be used to evaluate and restructure a functional- or performance-based BRS, STS concepts are applied to the evaluation of the building regulatory system in England.
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| 8. |
- Meacham, Brian, et al.
(author)
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Risk and Performance Assessment Framework for a Sustainable and Fire Resilient Building Environment (SAFR-BE)
- 2023
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Reports (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Increasingly, buildings are becoming complex “systems of systems” with many materials and attributes combining to create a whole that aims to meet a variety of design objectives including but not limited to functionality, aesthetic appeal, sustainability, safety, and security. We are now seeing this complexity move from commercial buildings and iconic structures to encompass even the residential sector. Such buildings are typically designed by professionals seeking to produce stunning, environmentally friendly, healthy, safe, and operationally efficient artifacts. They are engineered by experts from diverse disciplines, using innovative materials and technologies, that do not necessarily interact, but focus on their piece of the whole design picture. They are constructed within regulatory boundaries which largely align with the major systems or components of a building (e.g., structure, mechanical systems), albeit sometimes missing important interactions between systems, i.e., these complex designs sometimes result in important points of interaction between design objectives being outside of any individual designer’s responsibility. While this can result in rather spectacular buildings, with state-of-the-art technologies as part of the building (e.g., building-integrated photovoltaics) and within the building (e.g., automated systems for improved indoor environments or improved user comfort), if the design is not holistic and well-integrated, and the building is not adequately maintained within operational parameters, there can be unintended consequences that may not manifest until well after construction. In recent years, there have been a series of rather significant fire losses associated in one way or another with choices made to meet societal objectives to be more environmentally sustainable and minimize the potential for climate change. These include numerous high-rise exterior façade fires around the world, notably the Grenfell Tower fire in London, the Dietz & Watson cold storage warehouse in Delanco, and a spate of fires in buildings under construction using lightweight timber framing. The work presented in this report represents an overview of risk methodologies, an investigation of state-of-the-art publications concerning the nexus between fire safety and sustainability, and the latest proof-of-concept and development of a model to foster sustainable and fire resilient choices in the design process of a building. The literature review has shown that while little is presently published concerning the nexus of sustainability and fire safety, some interesting investigations of sustainable and fire safe solutions have been found. Further, while the development of a complex hierarchical model to assess the sustainability and fire resiliency of different design choices is difficult, we have been able to make the first steps towards creating a framework to support decision making in the design of sustainable and fire resilient buildings as part of a larger framework to create a sustainable and fire resilient built environment (SAFR-BE). But rather than the whole built environment, the focus is on sustainable and fire resilient buildings (SAFR-B). The framework is built on an analysis of regulatory requirements (for fire safety) and green building systems (for sustainability), as well as the creation of an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) risk assessment methodology. The resultant scores in the SAFR-B framework are based on generous input from international experts in the field of fire safety and sustainability, while the weighting between attributes has been based on the project team’s expert input. The resultant proof-of-concept framework has been applied to a fictive case study of an apartment building from Malmö. The building itself is perhaps not particularly representative of US buildings, but the application of the framework could easily be generalized to US structures should such a case exist. The results of the study show that the framework can give guidance to the designer of the importance of various choices for fire safety and sustainability, in a relative sense. The model is not absolute. The comparisons are not expressed as absolute numbers, and comparisons between different buildings are neither possible at the moment (the model has been developed specifically for apartment buildings), nor recommended due to the inherent differences between different applications and buildings. Relative comparisons are really the only comparison that makes sense at this point. The development of the model and application to apartment buildings is a first proof-of-concept. More developmental work is needed, and several suggestions have been forwarded at the end of the report concerning future improvements. Perhaps most importantly, more expert input is needed. The more experts that give their input and the broader range of experts involved, the better the overall scoring of relative importance of different survey items will be. Greater expert input will improve the robustness of the model and can ultimately provide sufficient information to make comparisons between different buildings or different building contexts. Finally, the model has specifically been developed for apartment buildings. While this is a good starting point, there is a need to add different types of buildings and to expand apartment buildings to both low-rise and high-rise examples. Expanding the application of the model will also expand its usefulness and range. Ideally, future buildings should be designed with the SAFR-B framework as an obvious step (or multiple steps) in the design process.
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