SFPE Guide to Human Behavior in Fire

SFPE Guide to Human Behavior in Fire
Author: Society of Fire Protection Engineers
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 159
Release: 2018-11-14
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319946978

This single resource for the fire safety community distills the most relevant and useful science and research into a consensus-based guide whose key factors and considerations impact the response and behavior of occupants of a building during a fire event. The Second Edition of SFPE's Engineering Guide: Human Behavior in Fire provides a common introduction to this field for the broad fire safety community: fire protection engineers/fire safety engineers, human behavior scientists/researchers, design professionals, and code authorities. The public benefits from consistent understanding of the factors that influence the responses and behaviors of people when threatened by fire and the application of reliable methodologies to evaluate and estimate human response in buildings and structures. This Guide also aims to lessen the uncertainties in the "people components" of fire safety and allow for more refined analysis with less reliance on arbitrary safety factors. As with fire science in general, our knowledge of human behavior in fire is growing, but is still characterized by uncertainties that are traceable to both limitation in the science and unfamiliarity by the user communities. The concepts for development of evacuation scenarios for performance-based designs and the technical methods to estimate evacuation response are reviewed with consideration to the limitation and uncertainty of the methods. This Guide identifies both quantitative and qualitative information that constitutes important consideration prior to developing safety factors, exercising engineering judgment, and using evacuation models in the practical design of buildings and evacuation procedures. Besides updating material in the First Edition, this revision includes new information on: Incapacitating Effects of Fire Effluent & Toxicity Analysis Methods Occupant Behavior Scnearios Movement Models and Behavioral Models Egress Model Selection, Verification, and Validation Estimation of Uncertainty and Use of Safety Factors Enhancing Human Response to Emergencies & Notification of Messaging The prediction of human behavior during a fire emergency is one of the most challenging areas of fire protection engineering. Yet, understanding and considering human factors is essential to designing effective evacuation systems, ensuring safety during a fire and related emergency events, and accurately reconstructing a fire.

Exploring Occupant Behavior in Buildings

Exploring Occupant Behavior in Buildings
Author: Andreas Wagner
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2017-10-27
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319614649

This book is the first to comprehensively cover research methods for building occupant behavior. As this is of growing importance for building design and for building performance optimization, the book aims to provide a sound scientific basis for experimental studies in this field. It introduces the reader to fundamental questions about the topic and unfolds the different fields related to occupant actions and comfort. This is followed by more general questions about developing an appropriate research method and experimental design. A comprehensive overview of sensors for monitoring environmental and also behavioral and action-related quantities helps to set up an experiment. In this context, different experimental environments and data collection methods (in-situ, laboratories, surveys) are introduced and discussed in terms of their suitability for the respective research question. Furthermore, data management and reporting is addressed. The book concludes with fundamental challenges in conducting occupant studies, with chapters on ground truth, ethics and privacy.

Fire Safety of Historical Buildings

Fire Safety of Historical Buildings
Author: Gabriele Bernardini
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 117
Release: 2017-04-19
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319557440

This book applies a behavioral point of view to individuals’ fire safety in historic buildings. It outlines theoretical and operative issues, based on recent studies and international guidelines. Firstly, critical issues for Building Heritage fire safety are widely discussed, by including the modelling of human factor and man-environment-fire interference in these architectural spaces. A significant part of the book includes a discussion on emergency modeling and simulation. A source code for representing the fire evacuation process (including man-evacuation facilities interactions) is offered to the reader. Methods for effectiveness assessment of risk-reducing solutions are provided and tested in a case-study. Being a structured approach to occupants-related problems during a fire in heritage buildings, it offers an innovative methodology and practical examples that researchers and designers can use as a guide when proposing and testing solutions. Evaluation indexes for effectiveness assessment (also useful for future guidelines or handbooks) are included. Readers are encouraged to understand these indexes within the proposed approach, so as to extend their applications and possibilities of how to introduce human behaviors-based solutions in other fields. Lastly, attention is focused on the proposal and evaluation of low-impact and not-invasive strategies, such as ones based on wayfinding elements. From this point of view, the pros and cons of wayfinding systems are discussed: these are important today, especially for fire-safety designers, because of the ongoing innovations in this field.

Residential Fire Safety

Residential Fire Safety
Author: Marcus Runefors
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2022-08-27
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3031063252

This book provides a comprehensive overview of deaths and injuries from residential fires as well as the most up to date information on evidence-based approaches to reduce this problem. The volume serves as a guide for professionals working in the field of fire prevention and as a textbook for instruction in universities and fire service schools. The authors’ interdisciplinary approach, where public health methodology is combined with fire protection engineering, medicine, and policy science, is quite distinctive outside of the technical literature devoted to larger scale fire events. Traditional textbooks on fire protection tend to describe the problem as purely technical, whereas in essence it is a problem of human vulnerability. In this book, readers will find lucid and rigorous descriptions of various risk groups and effective preventive measures that are effective, both in general and with respect to the different risk groups. They will also find work processes to facilitate risk reduction. Summarizing state-of-the-art knowledge and giving guidance for the future, both in terms of preventive efforts and ongoing research, Residential Fire Safety: An Interdisciplinary Approach, is ideal for students, educators, and practitioners of residential fire protection.

The Benefits of Behavioral Research to the Fire Service

The Benefits of Behavioral Research to the Fire Service
Author: Peter W. Blaich
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 152
Release: 2008-02-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780595606436

Previously, Fire Safety Engineers worked under a simple assumption that when a fire alarm activated, people will evacuation immediately. It was believed that how quickly people managed to evacuate a building depended mainly on physical abilities as well as the location of the nearest exit and the behavior of the fire. But work by Behavioral Scientists has found that this idea falls considerably short. Research now shows that as much as two thirds of the time it takes occupants to exit a building after the fire alarm sounds is startup time or time spent milling about and looking for more information. Ultimately, such a finding has big implications for architects, engineers and fire protection specialists hoping to design safer buildings. Subsequently, after the 9/11 terrorists attack this new way of thinking based on Human Behavior in Fire and Emergencies is getting more attention and funding. Studying how occupants react as events unfolded and finding out what helped or hindered the evacuation efforts during the 9/11 attacks has provided invaluable information for future building designs. Ultimately, it is the author of this book believes that this is going to impact structured emergency preparedness in a major way. The basic premise of this book is that design should be human-centered because it humancentered design that provides for the information that people need to adapt to the chaotic and uncertain way that fire develops.

SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering

SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering
Author: Morgan J. Hurley
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 3510
Release: 2015-10-07
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1493925652

Revised and significantly expanded, the fifth edition of this classic work offers both new and substantially updated information. As the definitive reference on fire protection engineering, this book provides thorough treatment of the current best practices in fire protection engineering and performance-based fire safety. Over 130 eminent fire engineers and researchers contributed chapters to the book, representing universities and professional organizations around the world. It remains the indispensible source for reliable coverage of fire safety engineering fundamentals, fire dynamics, hazard calculations, fire risk analysis, modeling and more. With seventeen new chapters and over 1,800 figures, the this new edition contains: Step-by-step equations that explain engineering calculations Comprehensive revision of the coverage of human behavior in fire, including several new chapters on egress system design, occupant evacuation scenarios, combustion toxicity and data for human behavior analysis Revised fundamental chapters for a stronger sense of context Added chapters on fire protection system selection and design, including selection of fire safety systems, system activation and controls and CO2 extinguishing systems Recent advances in fire resistance design Addition of new chapters on industrial fire protection, including vapor clouds, effects of thermal radiation on people, BLEVEs, dust explosions and gas and vapor explosions New chapters on fire load density, curtain walls, wildland fires and vehicle tunnels Essential reference appendices on conversion factors, thermophysical property data, fuel properties and combustion data, configuration factors and piping properties “Three-volume set; not available separately”