Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-12-01DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01678-7
Håkan Frantzich, Margaret McNamee, Erik Kimblad, Brian Meacham
{"title":"Decision Support Framework for Sustainable and Fire Resilient Buildings (SAFR-B)","authors":"Håkan Frantzich, Margaret McNamee, Erik Kimblad, Brian Meacham","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01678-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01678-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Buildings of all types are increasingly becoming complex ‘systems of systems.’ They are subject to evolving societal objectives, new and innovative materials, and in many countries, regulatory ecosystems are having difficulty keeping pace with rapidly changing societal, environmental and technological changes. Two evolving objectives that are stimulating changes to buildings and communities are the desire for a more environmentally sustainable built environment and the need to become more resilient to the many increasingly hazardous impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, in some building designs these objectives are in conflict. As a first step toward a more integrated, holistic tool to aid in the design of sustainable and fire resilient buildings (SAFR-B), this paper develops and applies a first-order decision framework for a midrise apartment building. The SAFR-B framework is built on an analysis of design and regulatory objectives for fire safety and sustainability for buildings, and of risk and decision methods that can support design decisions. It makes use of risk indexing and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), with initial scoring and weighting of attributes and strategies derived from international experts in the field of fire safety and sustainability through a Delphi process.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 1","pages":"213 - 246"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10694-024-01678-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143108254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-21DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01661-2
Sayaka Suzuki, Tomohiro Naruse, Samuel L. Manzello
{"title":"Towards Developing the Scientific Basis for New Testing Methodologies to Quantify and Compare Firebrand Generation from Building Components","authors":"Sayaka Suzuki, Tomohiro Naruse, Samuel L. Manzello","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01661-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01661-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Firebrands are a dangerous threat, leading to fire spread at distances far away from the original fire location. Testing methodologies are needed to be develop materials so that buildings produce less firebrands during actual fire events. Through dedicated experiments focused on understanding the complex process of firebrand generation from full-scale buildings and building components under wind, a reduced-scale test method capable of comparing firebrand generation from mock-up assemblies has been developed. Here, a new series of full-scale experiments under wind, focused on roof assemblies fitted with cedar roof coverings, was undertaken to determine if the reduced-scale experimental method could indeed predict the full-scale experimental observations. The reduced-scale experimental method correctly predicted that: fire retardant cedar shakes would produce the least number of firebrands, the overall range of firebrand sizes generated from all types of cedar coverings utilized, and that the firebrand coefficient, namely, firebrand density times average thickness of firebrands, <span>({(rho }_{fb}times {delta }_{ave, fb} ={alpha }_{fb})</span>) increased as the wind speed increased for cedar shingles. Cedar shakes resulted in a different trend in firebrand coefficient, which may be expected due to their more non-uniform shape prior to combustion.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"1759 - 1777"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10694-024-01661-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145168017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-15DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01673-y
Irfan Ahmad Rana, Muhammad Awais Nisar, Rida Hameed Lodhi, Hassam Bin Waseem, Adnan Nawaz, Ayman Aslam, Abdul Muqeet Shah
{"title":"Multi-Phase Residential Fire Vulnerability Assessment","authors":"Irfan Ahmad Rana, Muhammad Awais Nisar, Rida Hameed Lodhi, Hassam Bin Waseem, Adnan Nawaz, Ayman Aslam, Abdul Muqeet Shah","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01673-y","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01673-y","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Identifying fire vulnerability levels and indicators in residential structures is crucial. Residential fire could cause burn injuries, deaths, and property damage. Studies have found a lack of adherence to fire safety standards in construction practices and inadequate perception of household risks as the prime factors contributing to residential fire risk. This study proposes a comprehensive multi-phase residential vulnerability assessment, namely socioeconomic, fire ignition, fire combat, fire development, and fire escape stages vulnerability. A comprehensive household survey was conducted across three residential areas in Faisalabad, Pakistan, with distinct structural designs and urban configurations. The multi-phase residential fire vulnerability was carried out by employing internally formulated indices. Results revealed that the fire constitutes a significant peril, with over 50% of households in the designated study area manifesting vulnerabilities. The proposed methodology was found robust enough to identify factors and stages where attention is needed. The implications of this study extend to policymaking bodies, development practitioners, architects, and urban planners, offering them valuable insights to concentrate their endeavors on diminishing fire hazards and associated susceptibilities.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"2073 - 2103"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145165408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-15DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01669-8
Jiaqing Zhang, Fengju Shang, Shanwen Zhang, Liufang Wang, Yanguo Ke, Jie Huang, Wen Su, Rui Liu, Youjie Sheng
{"title":"Research on Key Parameters and Fire Extinguishing Effectiveness of Compressed Air Foam System Used for UHV Substation","authors":"Jiaqing Zhang, Fengju Shang, Shanwen Zhang, Liufang Wang, Yanguo Ke, Jie Huang, Wen Su, Rui Liu, Youjie Sheng","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01669-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01669-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Compressed air foams (CAFs) system has proved to be highly effective to generate uniform and highly stable foam, showed a great potential application in ultra-high voltage (UHV) substation. But the key parameters of the system are not focused deeply. In this paper, an experimental platform was established to study the effect of system parameters of CAFs on foam jet capability, including the nozzle aperture, flowrate, liquid–gas ratio, jet angle, and ambient wind speed. Also, fire extinguishing performance of the CAFs was evaluated after parameter optimization. The results show that there is an optimal nozzle aperture range, and the foam jet distance can be increased by increasing the flowrate, liquid–gas ratio, and angle. The offset degree of foam jet path increases with the increase of wind speed. The methods to improve the wind resistance of foam include increasing the nozzle aperture, decreasing the flowrate, and changing the jet angle. The CAFs have a high performance of extinguishing transformer oil fire, but it gradually decreases with the increase of fire source position under ambient wind. This paper can provide guidance for the design of CAFs system used in UHV substation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"1969 - 1990"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145165409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-13DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01662-1
Yang Li, Qinglin Han, Gaozhi Cui, Ke Bai
{"title":"Evaluation of Firefighter Training Effectiveness Based on Human Physiological Signals and Improved Transfer Learning","authors":"Yang Li, Qinglin Han, Gaozhi Cui, Ke Bai","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01662-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01662-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Worldwide, governments at all levels are trying to minimize the number of firefighter injuries and fatalities during rescue operations. Inadequate day-to-day training has been identified as a significant cause of accidents. Traditional machine learning-based methods to evaluate the training effectiveness of firefighters require large amounts of data. Still, it is difficult to obtain large quantities of data due to the specificity of the firefighting profession and the poor reproducibility of human physiological signals. This study aims to use transfer learning to solve the problem of insufficient sample size resulting in low assessment accuracy. In this study, four human physiological signals surface Electromyography(sEMG), Electrocardiogram(ECG), Photoplethysmography(PPG), and Respiration(RESP) were selected to build a training effectiveness assessment database, using firefighter training data as the target domain and student-simulated firefighter training data as the source domain and a training effectiveness assessment model based on the Improved Joint Distribution Adaptation (JDA) was proposed. Its validity was verified using the public dataset and the self-constructed database. The results show that the accuracy of the improved JDA training effectiveness evaluation model under minor sample conditions is 0.83, which can quickly find the optimal parameters of the model and has higher evaluation accuracy compared with the traditional JDA.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"1779 - 1807"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145165021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-12DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01676-9
Weining Sun, Yuanhao Liu, Feng Wang, Le Hua, Jianzhong Fu, Songyu Hu
{"title":"A Study on Flame Detection Method Combining Visible Light and Thermal Infrared Multimodal Images","authors":"Weining Sun, Yuanhao Liu, Feng Wang, Le Hua, Jianzhong Fu, Songyu Hu","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01676-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01676-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Fire disasters pose a significant threat to human safety. Therefore, timely and effective fire detection is crucial for mitigating these threats. Combining visible light and thermal infrared for multimodal flame detection can fully utilize the visual and temperature distribution information of flames, potentially considerably enhancing the accuracy and robustness of flame detection methods. This approach is a highly promising detection method. However, the visible light and thermal infrared modalities differ fundamentally in imaging principles, pixel resolution, and texture information. Thus, effective fusion of these modalities becomes challenging. To address this issue, a novel flame detection method that integrates visible light and thermal infrared images is introduced. For the visible light modality, an overall model based on Mask R-CNN is designed, with ConvNeXt as the backbone, FPN as the neck, and a cascade structure as the detection head. Then, for the thermal infrared modality, to adapt to its weak semantic and strong texture features, we specifically modified the model’s neck to better extract the underlying texture information of the image using the PAFPN structure. Furthermore, we designed a multimodal fusion algorithm using GIoU to fuse detection information from the visible light and thermal infrared modalities to address the weak alignment of detection targets in imaging principles, pixel resolution, and texture information. Experimental results on both public and self-collected datasets demonstrate that our proposed method outperforms other mainstream target detection networks in flame detection. Moreover, ablation experiments suggest that multimodal fusion significantly improves the overall performance of the algorithm. Specifically, our method achieves an accuracy of 85.33, a recall of 99.33, and an F1 score of 90.03.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"2167 - 2188"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145165574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-12DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01658-x
Ataollah Taghipour Anvari, Saahastaranshu R. Bhardwaj, Amit H. Varma
{"title":"Performance of Composite Plate Shear Walls (SpeedCore) Under Fire Loading: An Experimental Investigation","authors":"Ataollah Taghipour Anvari, Saahastaranshu R. Bhardwaj, Amit H. Varma","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01658-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01658-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Composite-Plate Shear Walls/Concrete Filled (C-PSW/CF), also known as SpeedCore walls, are being used in the construction of mid- and high-rise buildings. The cross-section of C-PSW/CF consists of concrete infill sandwiched by steel plates, steel tie bars, and shear studs. Fire incidents may occur in buildings and the structural components including C-PSW/CF may be exposed to elevated temperatures. The mechanical properties of the materials in the cross-section of C-PSW/CF will degrade due to elevated temperatures during a fire incident. This phenomenon may result in the collapse of walls under combined fire and gravity loading. Thus, there is a need to evaluate the fire performance of C-PSW/CF. Five scaled C-PSW/CF specimens with a wall thickness of 229 mm were tested under combined fire and gravity loading. The experiments evaluated the effect of steel plate slenderness ratio, axial load ratio, use of shear studs, and fire scenario (uniform and non-uniform heating) on the behavior of C-PSW/CF under fire loading. For uniform fire exposure, the specimens meeting the design and detailing requirements of current U.S. specifications resisted the fire loading for more than 150 min without the application of any fireproofing. Thermal expansion of the specimens was observed in the initial stages of fire exposure, followed by the buckling of steel plates. No weld or tie bar fractures were observed for the specimens. The specimen subjected to non-uniform fire exposure satisfied the thermal barrier criteria for a fire duration of 140 min. Global out-of-plane bending of the wall was observed due to non-uniform fire exposure. For all specimens, water and steam emanated through the provided steam vent holes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"1669 - 1699"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145164433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-11DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01675-w
Akshat Chulahwat, Hussam Mahmoud
{"title":"Multi-objective Optimization for Exploring the Effectiveness of Building Mitigation Towards Reducing Urban Conflagrations","authors":"Akshat Chulahwat, Hussam Mahmoud","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01675-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01675-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The impact of wildfires on communities has been devastating in recent years. With the advent of climate change, the frequency and intensity of wildfire events will rise. The increasing population in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) has further amplified the exposure of communities to such events. In this study, we demonstrate the application of a graph-based framework for modeling fire propagation through a heterogeneous fuel and evaluating the impact of different passive fire intervention strategies on a community. We utilize an optimization framework to determine the most effective intervention strategy based on the priority given to either performance, cost, or both. The performance is measured by minimizing the mean vulnerability of the community after applying intervention strategies to individual buildings, and the cost is calculated as the normalized cost of implementing a particular strategy for the entire community. Four distinct communities across the United States are selected to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed fire intervention framework. The results show that optimal intervention strategies depend on the extent to which performance and cost are prioritized. Furthermore, the optimal strategies are also affected by the characteristics of a community, as variations in the optimal strategy are observed for the four communities considered.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"2139 - 2165"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145165085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-02DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01666-x
Shivangi Dwivedi, Richa Srivastava, Prasun Kumar Roy
{"title":"Beyond a Single Use: Understanding the Longevity and Reusability of Fire Proximity Suits","authors":"Shivangi Dwivedi, Richa Srivastava, Prasun Kumar Roy","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01666-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01666-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Firefighters frequently wear fire proximity clothing to shield themselves from high heat fluxes, especially radiant heat. The outer layer in these proximity suits is a laminate of aluminised polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film with a flame resistant fabric, usually belonging to the class of glass or aramids. The role of the outer layer is to reflect the radiant component of the heat flux. A common concern revolves around whether the performance of these suits degrade over time or with repeated use, exposure to flames or other factors. This study investigated the effect of these parameters like abrasion and folding operations, natural weathering, repeated radiant and convective exposures as well as contamination, on the thermal and radiant protective capabilities of these proximity firefighting suits. Our studies clearly indicate that abrasion as well as chemical etching lead to significant reduction in the protection level, from a time to second degree burn (t<sub>2nd</sub>) of 41 ± 1 s for unabraded to as low as 14 ± 0.5 s after 500 abrasion cycles and 6 ± 0.5 s after chemical etching. Although repeated short duration 30 s radiant exposures does not have any adverse effect on the protective performance of the suit, however, flame exposure led to significant damages in the aluminised layer and t<sub>2nd</sub> reduced to 5 ± 0.5 s. In addition, operations like folding and contamination with soot significantly contributed to deterioration of the suits' performance. Radiant Protective Performance of soot contaminated samples and folded samples reduced to 7 ± 0.5 s and 18 ± 0.5 s respectively. Our findings address longstanding enquiries regarding the post usage utility of aluminised suits. Our study reinforces the importance of proper care and the maintenance of these suits in order to improve their service life.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"1915 - 1935"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145161153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fire TechnologyPub Date : 2024-11-01DOI: 10.1007/s10694-024-01672-z
Xuefeng Jiang, Liuquan Xu, Xianjin Fang
{"title":"DG-YOLO: A Novel Efficient Early Fire Detection Algorithm Under Complex Scenarios","authors":"Xuefeng Jiang, Liuquan Xu, Xianjin Fang","doi":"10.1007/s10694-024-01672-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10694-024-01672-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In reality, it is important to control fires in their early stages. However, the early stages of a fire are characterized by small flames with blurred edges. Additionally, the interference in complex scenarios involving occlusion, light interference, and fire-like objects leads to a high leakage rate and false detection rate of existing target detection methods in early fire detection. To address the above problems, this paper proposes a novel and efficient method for early fire detection in complex scenarios, called DG-YOLO. Firstly, a deformable attention (DA) is introduced in the YOLOv8 backbone. Focusing on small fire features, it enhances the anti-interference ability of the model in complex scenes. Secondly, the addition of a lightweight feature extraction module (GSC2f) gives the model a rich gradient flow to capture early flame edge features, thus enabling effective multi-scale feature fusion. Finally, to address the limitations of small early flames and blurred edges, we introduce a small-target detector. It effectively captures the shape and texture information of early fires in complex scenes and reduces the leakage rate and false alarm rate. Comprehensive experiments have been conducted on a dataset of real-life scenarios. The results of the study show that the F1 score and mAP50 metrics are improved by an astonishing 9.77% and 10.7%, respectively. The leakage rate and false alarm rate are effectively reduced. Meanwhile, comparison experiments show that DG-YOLO surpasses the current advanced technology. The efficiency of the model for early fire detection in complex scenarios is demonstrated.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":558,"journal":{"name":"Fire Technology","volume":"61 4","pages":"2047 - 2071"},"PeriodicalIF":2.4,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145160597","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}