170 - Integrating Fire Safety and Security Objectives with Stewe Gwynne and Aoife Hunt

Transcript

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Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show.

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This podcast is produced for myself, to learn from great people around the world, and while I am learning, I try to share those lessons with you, my dear listeners.

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So we all grow together as better fire professionals, and sometimes there are those episodes that I approach without knowing or understanding what's going to happen and they turn absolutely amazing and they really change my point of view, and that obviously is the case of today's episode, and in this episode we're talking about the interface between the fire safety and security layers in a building.

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You could imagine that this may be not the most exciting topic you could talk about in fire safety engineering and my idea what it's going to be was, let's say, moderately enthusiastic.

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But I've invited brilliant people Steve Queen and Ivo Hahn from Movement Strategies.

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I knew it cannot end up wrongly.

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They came to me and told me, boy, check, let's do an episode on security.

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And I'm like, okay, let's try it.

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And oh boy, this was really, really eye-opening for me, an interface that I have not seen and it was in front of my eyes all the time, and something that really changes the perspective of fire safety engineer in the times that are pretty troubling in the times where we will care about security more and more, and it just gives such an immense level of complexity to things that were not simple to start with.

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It also shows that if we design our fire safety solutions ignorant of other objectives of the building, we could perhaps create harm, even if we want to do good stuff.

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Even if we design the best fire safety system, in certain non-fire related scenarios those systems can lead to pretty dangerous outcomes and they must be tamed.

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They must be controlled by the building itself, and the more you think about it while designing your building, the easier that control will be, the lesser will be the burden on the end user of the building.

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Gosh, these are the lessons I got from the episode.

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You have to stick to the entire thing to understand what do I mean.

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I'm an ignorant fire safety engineer who had no clue about the security objectives of a building and how they interact with the fire safety features.

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And, yeah, after this conversation I feel my eyes have opened and I understand a little bit more.

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I'm definitely more curious in this space and I hope it will be the same for you after you go through this episode.

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So, without further ado, let's spin the intro and jump into the episode.

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Welcome to the Firesize Show.

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My name is Wojciech Wigrzyński and I will be your host.

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This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants.

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Get in touch at OFRconsultantscom.

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Hello everybody.

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I am here today joined by Steve Gwynne

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, a professor of evacuation and pedestrian dynamics at Lund and the research lead at movement strategies hey, steve, welcome back to the podcast, it's good to see you.

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And also joined by Aoife Hunt, market leader at Movement Strategies and Adjunct Professor at the University of Maryland.

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Hey Aoife, good to have you in the show.

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Hi, great to join you Bo.

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Thanks for coming, and that's going to be an interesting subject related to human behaviors in fires.

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That's going to be an interesting subject related to human behaviors in fires.

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We've chosen a theme around security and life safety, two important objectives in our buildings.

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Perhaps you can start defining what's a security objective and what's a life safety objective, and where do they align?

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Where do they cross, because I think that those boundaries will be fundamental for the discussion.

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Yeah, sure, I think it's first worth stepping back a little bit and thinking about building and thinking about how they're used and what we do with them.

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So you can think of the building as a people movement system.

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Basically, people enter the building, they use the building as they normally would, as i ntended, as part of operations, and then they would leave the building so ingress, circulation and egress.

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But then on top of that, overlaid on that, you have these procedural concerns, which include safety in our case, fire safety just normal operation, providing the service and functionality of the building and security and how we experience it as occupants or residents is usually pretty seamless.

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We, we just experience the building, we go in, we use it.

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We are not always subject to these procedures that exist, but we only really feel the impact of the changing responsibilities, if you like, of those procedures, either during an emergency or during change.

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I guess the issue is, even though we experience these things continuously, we often address them in distinct ways, in distinct ways.

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So you'd have people that have responsibilities for safety, people that have responsibility for security and, of course, people that have responsibility for services and operations.

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So I came into this building where I am today, I walked in, I got coffee from someone downstairs, I touched my badge in that's my security concern and then I got the lift, which is at a staircase next to it, but for evacuation.

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And so, however, how these things are managed and addressed in real life is much more discreet.

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Oftentimes it's the transition, the transition from one mode of use, be it entrance and circulation, or one procedure, be it normal operations and security or normal operations.

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That's really where it becomes challenging, I think, and where it tests our approach to planning and managing such spaces.

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I like to think about the roles of those systems.

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Of course, those systems would have completely different roles, but you reach a point where one system may have overlap another, you know, and you're reaching a point in which one system is more important than another, point in which one system is more important than another.

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And I find it really challenging, especially in high value spaces like jewelry shops, for example, like go ahead and design a fire safety strategy for a jewelry shop that makes it open, wide open.

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When there's a smoke around, it's not possible to get it through because it contradicts their main way of operation so much.

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I wonder if you have had similar experiences, eva.

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Perhaps you can comment on your connection between security and life safety and fire safety.

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Yeah, absolutely.

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I mean, I think when we're talking about security, we're talking about protecting people or a building or an organization from threats like just said there with your jewelry shop, like crime or attacks and we can consider sort of a threat as a kind of malicious event.

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Right, that's got the potential to cause harm and in that way it's very different to a fire.

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Right, it's not accidental, it's human driven.

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It's about a person or an individual with malicious intent looking to exploit a vulnerability and then we also think about risk and the risk is the likelihood of that thing happening and if it does happen, would it cause damage or harm?

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So it's really similar to fire safety in that security looks at mitigating those risks, but it's a lot more complex as well and the way that you mitigate those risks are in your design and your procedures.

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In exactly the same way, as Steve said there at the start, that's going to impact the way that people move and behave and typically researchers and consultants and organizations are considering these things very separately in silos.

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But it's clear that the mitigation that you know that are put in place to make people more secure can impact fire safety, and the mitigations put in place to protect people from fire can impact security.

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So, for example, hostile vehicle mitigation, which is looking at protecting people from hostile vehicles.

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You'll have seen the spate of attacks in the last sort of 10 years.

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That has to be in the form of obstacles.

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You see bollards and you see planters and all that kind of stuff.

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But putting those in in certain places can inhibit the escape routes if there's a fire.

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So it's about weighing up one thing against the other and then on the other side, stuff that's put into support in a fire emergency, like the ability to break open doors in a fire, can inhibit a building or organisation from being able to lock down, being able to protect their staff and their people by locking doors if there's something happening outside, like a shooter, for example.

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And I've got loads more examples we can go into later, but I think the important thing is that the goals are similar.

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Right, it's all about protecting human life, but it's done so separately.

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So you know, we work so often with new buildings, so there's a new building and then there's a flying safety report and then, completely separately, by a completely different consultant, there's a security report or a security assessment, and it's often the operations that are left to pick up the pieces, the people who then have to implement these on the ground.

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And you know we're focusing on security and fly safety here, but it's not also just that, it's health and safety, crowd safety procedures and all those usual businesses, usual operations, crowd safety procedures and all those usual business as usual operations.

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I think the thing we're learning is that when these things are done very separately, without thinking about how one impacts the other, then it can lead to inefficient designs and again having to retrofit and retrothink and use operations to plaster over the gaps.

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I think as well just following on from something Eva said that it gets even more complicated when you look at the staff who are present to manage these various events, various concerns.

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So, for instance, the old classic biosafety in a nightclub.

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And you might have a member of security, a bouncer as we call them here in the UK, and their job is to limit and manage access, physically address matters of security.

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So that affects how people make use of the space, how they enter the space and what they consider viable exits.

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But then, on the flip side, during an evacuation, they may adopt a different role.

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And another example might be a cabin attendant on an aircraft whose job is normally part of the service and to guide you.

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You see, and it's very accommodating.

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During an evacuation their role is to get you off the plane, and so they're adopting a different role in different scenarios, be it safety or be it security, and of course, cabinet attendants can also be part of the security issue as well.

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So it's that complexity that's very much present in the mass of the structure.

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I think your point of view that in the mass of the structure, I think your point of view that it's part of the same system.

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It's not like you have a separate security system including separate security pathways that people would walk through and then evacuate.

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Actually, if you would separate them, you would very highly diminish the effectiveness of evacuation system, like from my talks with Daniel Nielsen in the Uncovered Witness podcast.

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He told me about the theory of affordances.

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How do we make the exits and signage and everything easy to interpret and easy to use in a way that for people is natural to use them?

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And here security is another contradiction.

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If you put the door is locked under alarm on an evacuation door, that's a very easy way, you know, to really lower the effectiveness of evacuation system by.

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I'm not sure if you get any gain in the security system and I wonder if the person putting the sticker on has realized what has happened.

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If you said before that that would be two consultants, two groups of people working separately on those, and here a simple sticker is profound for us Now working on modern buildings.

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Do you see a way to close the gap between those two silos, to make people more aware?

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I mean, one of the key challenges that's unique to the security is how quickly it changes.

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So if you're looking at the threats that might face a building or a site, that will change over time the size threat is pretty constant and pretty well understood.

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So you know, if you're a shop, you might be looking at something like theft.

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If you're a nuclear site, you might be looking to protect information or plans.

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And if you're a major site, you might be looking to protect information or plans.

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And if you're a major event, you might be looking at what would happen if a terrorist tried to conduct an attack.

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The challenge is you've got to take your building.

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You've got to understand what the threats are that it might face, what the associated mitigations are, so it wouldn't be the same for two different buildings.

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Know that that might change over time.

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So the threat you face this year might be different in five years.

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So it's not like a fire safety strategy that's going to work for 50 years for a whole building.

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If it's comprehensive enough, it's got to be kind of a living strategy and then, in terms of how to address it, it would be around working through on a scenario basis how the building would respond under the most likely scenarios, including fire, and pairing them together.

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So I think one of the reasons this has come into more sharp focus in the last few years is that the idea of fire being used as a weapon is now getting more recognised.

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So before it used to be, you know, it could be terrorists with guns and it could be terrorists, you know, using IEDs, or, you know, bombs, explosive devices, or, separately, it could be an accidental fire.

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There's now the question of what if someone's using fire in a hostile way as a weapon, purposely setting off fires, which means that the way that the behavior of the fire will be different.

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Right, because it's been done on purpose for maximum impact.

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It might not be in one location and spreading, as a fire scientist would expect it to, it might be set off in multiple different locations.

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Spreading as a fire scientist would expect it to, it might be set off in multiple different locations and indeed, if the goal of the person who's instigating this kind of attack is to cause as much harm as possible, could the fire safety systems be used as part of the attack?

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Could they be instigating an evacuation in order to send people to a different place?

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This blows it wide open in terms of the number of scenarios that need to be taken into consideration.

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Now, as I said, not every site is going to have to think of this right.

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It's only the ones that have that threat facing them.

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But for those who do have that complicated threat picture, it is about running through the likely scenarios and working with your fire safety consultants not separately from them to say, if we had to come up for a strategy that's going to work in these 10 situations all 10, what's that one strategy that's going to apply?

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It doesn't have to be the same procedure, necessarily, but what's our plan that's going to deal with them all?

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Because we've seen that plans that have been done separately aren't necessarily going to work.

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Can I follow up on that?

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Because I think April raises several very important points.

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One of them.

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Can I follow up there?

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Because I think April writes several very important points.

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One of them we sort of pretty much understand the systems that would be in place for fire safety.

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You'd have a detection system, you'd have potentially a suppression system and then a notification system to inform people.

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Firstly, if it's a non-fire security concern, detection is really hard and working out the nature of the threat.

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And secondly, if it's a fire-based security threat and, as even said, the some of the assumptions on which fire safety is based, which is, you know, you look for where the fire may reasonably start and there might be a single fire scenario and it's based on what's in the building typically rather than what's introduced into the building.

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Well, that's that's, as Eva said, that blows the scenarios off the chart, because it means that the nature of the fire scenarios that might arise could be very, very different and deliberately bad.

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So I think there's that what systems do we have in place that might reasonably account for the range of scenarios that might be faced and might detect them, and what might those scenarios be and how might the normal fire safety approach and fire safety tools be brought to bear to support some of those security concerns, because I think lessons can be brought to the table from both sides and we might be missing some of those tricks if we silo them out.

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What kind of tools of fire safety would you have in mind?

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Like public address systems, what else?

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I think this gets to a really interesting point, which is not just what systems are in place, but what might the responses be?

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Because typically for fire safety, you might say, okay, we will design it such that you can stay in place or that you might evacuate to a place of relative safety or out of the building, and the notification system might support or would support those procedures, ideally.

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And so the concerns of communication in a fire evacuation are to make sure that the people that you need informed are aware of the incident, are aware of what they need to do and aware of where they need to go.

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But in a security scenario, that's a very different approach might be adopted, and I'll let you take it from here, because I think this is an area of particular interest.

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Yeah, so the use of public announcements is very effective in a dynamic, emerging emergency like a terrorist attack, for example, and it's very difficult to automate that in the same way that you could for fire, right.

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So you could have a smart announcement system that can tell people in the building what floor the fire is on and they should evacuate, and they have a drill once a year and everyone knows where they're going and they should evacuate, and they have a drill once a year and everyone knows where they're going.

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And it might be that one exit's taken out but everything else is pretty straightforward and the threat and the hazard isn't moving.

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So lovely, straightforward scenario.

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Then you get something like a marauding attack, where you have one or two or three hostiles moving through a space trying to conduct an attack.

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What's been found is that announcements that very clearly state to people in real time where the attack is happening and asking them to either evacuate or to hide if they can't evacuate, are really effective.

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But that requires something which you don't need for fire systems and that's eyes on, so CCTV footage typically, because giving the wrong information can be very, very dangerous.

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So you have a command and control perspective to a terrorist incident and to certain security incidents that you just don't have.

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In the same way, if it was just a fire and again that becomes more complicated when you have two things happening at the same time very, very tricky to say to a bunch of people in an office building there is fire, a fire on level eight, there's also a moving terrorist attack happening on level four and give instruction that is personalized enough for people to be able to take the right action.

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So the sort of advice is always around letting people know what's happening and where it's happening and before that, the training, not to say exactly.

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In a fire it's very easy for people to practice exactly what they would do in exactly the right way, that they would do it In an attack scenario.

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It has to be much more dynamic where people are able to understand where they are in relation to the threat and able to figure out their roots for themselves.

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I have multiple questions to follow up that, but I think I would need a step back a little bit.

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So in case of a fire, I understand the response of the building, like the hazard is detected, the people are notified, some sort of planned evacuation activity should happen.

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Either it's a phased evacuation, stay put, total evacuation, whatever the fire strategy told you, but for me it's kind of like obvious, almost a linear timeline.

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It's just what we've planned for case of a fire.

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But in case of a security threat or an attack on the building there must be multiple strategies, like you've already mentioned, evacuation.

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But I assume in some cases you would like to isolate the space.

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What kind of responses you would expect in that hazard and how would they compare to the evacuation?

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What do you want to do with people in case of security breaches?

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So, firstly, you don't want to ever get to the point where you have to respond, so there's a whole bunch of work before around deterrence, so to stop it happening in the first place, but also detection, fire detection Again, we sort of tick that box very easily on fire science because it's very straightforward Detecting an attack is critical to life safety and to have an appropriate response because it might be.

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Has someone left a bag?

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Is someone leaving suspiciously being able to?

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You know, there are automated systems, like gunshot detection systems, for example, that can be used, or automated video analytics that can be used, that can be put over cameras to say this crowd's behaving in a way that we think an attack is emerging or this person's behaving in a way that is indicative of an attack.

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So there's the time.

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To detect is a really crucial part of I'm not going to say a timeline, because it's just not as linear as we'd love it to be.

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And then, once it's happening, you're exactly right in terms of the sort of procedures you might employ.

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It could be an evacuation.

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It's very unlikely if you had a marauding attack that you would fully evacuate a building because you would certainly be sending people into the hands of the attackers.

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It's more about a multiple layered response, which could be people hiding in lockable rooms.

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So we've got staff members who know where the lockable rooms are, where protected areas are, and knowing to get themselves in there and lock themselves in.

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I'm going to say partial evacuation.

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It's actually just sort of moving away from danger.

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It doesn't necessarily have to be outside of the building, but creating space between individuals and the location of the attack.

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Sometimes an evacuation or a lockdown is another procedure that could be useful.

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Remember during the Paris attacks where Stade de France decided to keep everyone in the stadium knowing that the attacks were happening outside, and it was a good decision to keep that several tens of thousands of people inside that area.

00:22:28.165 --> 00:22:30.455
Sometimes it's a mixture of a few.

00:22:30.455 --> 00:22:38.284
So you have an evacuation because people are close to the attack, but actually people near an exit where the attackers are can go, so they should go as well.

00:22:38.786 --> 00:22:44.183
My point here is that it has to be very dynamic and therefore it has to be managed in real time by a person.

00:22:44.183 --> 00:22:52.145
We're not yet at a place where you could get kind of a lovely dynamic signage system to automatically work out for everyone where they should go.

00:22:52.145 --> 00:22:54.776
And again, going back to my very first point around.

00:22:54.776 --> 00:23:04.426
The differences between this kind of attack and a sire is that this is a person who is a cognizant, thinking individual trying to conduct this attack.

00:23:04.426 --> 00:23:09.086
They'll be using whatever information and procedures you come into the building to their advantage.

00:23:09.086 --> 00:23:16.804
So any information you give to people or instruction you give to people during the attack, the attackers can also hear and take advantage of.

00:23:17.474 --> 00:23:30.005
It's a very difficult thing to get right in a sort of live situation, but I think organizations who it's not about having a single evacuation plan, a single evacuation plan, a single lockdown plan.

00:23:30.005 --> 00:23:37.027
It's about having the command and control procedures so that you can respond to the incident in a dynamic way.

00:23:37.027 --> 00:23:43.838
Now the way that fire can come in and mess everything up is that everyone has a defined idea of how they would respond to a fire.

00:23:43.838 --> 00:23:52.727
So if the people in your building are responding because they think it's a fire when in fact it's an attack, that can work against you and that can be used.

00:23:53.008 --> 00:24:05.589
That can be used as that confusion, the fact that the attacker, the threat, has agency and has a motive, and has a motive and has a means and is trying to reach that objective.

00:24:05.589 --> 00:24:16.064
Whatever it is, they can use the information available to them and the confusion that they're causing as a means, an additional tool, as an additional means of strengthening their attack.

00:24:16.064 --> 00:24:22.605
We've brushed over it a little bit, but the detection part of this can be incredibly complicated.

00:24:22.605 --> 00:24:34.247
The good thing about most modern buildings, and certainly recent ones, is is that they've got, if there's a fire and that there's smoke detectors, they're going to pretty much detect a fire of a certain size.

00:24:34.247 --> 00:24:37.606
That's why they're in the building trying to detect an attack.

00:24:37.606 --> 00:24:38.811
Why I don't know.

00:24:38.832 --> 00:24:51.938
Something like bladed whip in a crowded space remotely is really hard and people very close to the incident might not even know it's had, whereas a gunshot or an IED or something like that obviously produces different cues.

00:24:51.938 --> 00:25:15.784
So the point being here whereas in fire we have a pretty good understanding of the type of cues that might be produced from the threat, in a security attack that range of cues may vary wildly depending on the nature of the attack and the objective of the attacker, whether it's to cause damage, whether it's to harm an individual or lots of people, or whatever it is.

00:25:15.784 --> 00:25:21.434
There's a range of different motivations that might be present and a range of different weapons that might be present.

00:25:21.695 --> 00:25:38.298
I think one of the important things here as well is that in then asking people to respond to a terrorist attack when they're used to responding to fire evacuation can be really challenging, not just because you're getting them to do things they're not used to doing, but also some of these standard rules that have been, that have been around for years, will need to go.

00:25:38.298 --> 00:25:40.723
Like you can't use fire lifts, for example.

00:25:40.723 --> 00:25:43.994
So let's say you have a high rise building in a city, there isn't a fire.

00:25:43.994 --> 00:25:44.125
That, for example.

00:25:44.125 --> 00:25:50.862
So let's say you have a high-rise building in a city, there isn't a fire, but there's excellent intelligence about something about to happen and this building needs to be evacuated.

00:25:50.862 --> 00:25:54.125
It could be maybe an ID has been indicated or something.

00:25:54.595 --> 00:25:58.214
The lifts would make it much more efficient to evacuate that building.

00:25:58.214 --> 00:26:10.825
But often buildings don't have that plan to say OK, our evacuation plans are all assuming fire, they're not assuming a security threat and we don't have the sort of lift programming to be able to do a really effective evacuation.

00:26:10.825 --> 00:26:16.750
That would need to be another mode we put in because we've got it in business as usual and then in evacuation it's uh, firefighters only.

00:26:16.750 --> 00:26:27.307
So it's again the thinking, getting people who've been really well informed about fires for many years now and their response to do something that they feel isn't part of their usual procedures.

00:26:28.174 --> 00:26:30.662
As someone who's dealing with building automation mostly.

00:26:30.662 --> 00:26:36.444
I'm stressed now because you know my building automation, the way how I would design it for FHIR situation.

00:26:36.444 --> 00:26:49.484
It would be to overtake as many decisions from a human onto an automated execution of a FHIR strategy that I would like and, I believe, many of the things that I would design for my fire strategy.

00:26:49.484 --> 00:27:00.685
In case of an attack, as you've described it, and those strategies that you've described previously, they would be contradictory and they could create very dangerous circumstances.

00:27:00.685 --> 00:27:22.561
And now, as I think about it, the only thing between a person performing an attack and triggering all of that automation I have in my building is pressing one button that's convenient to place at every fire door, the pull-down alarm or whatever, and when you press that you trigger everything I've planned, which will make the process very challenging.

00:27:22.561 --> 00:27:24.351
So I've planned, which will make the process very challenging.

00:27:25.516 --> 00:27:41.858
So I would say, not only I understand that stress and there have been instances where people have deliberately used the advanced technology in the building, fire safety technology for their own ends, and actually just part of this conversation it's just made me think.

00:27:42.680 --> 00:27:49.990
You know, in many instances now and then this may be particular to the UK, but let me just run out the examples.

00:27:49.990 --> 00:28:02.387
If there's a fire and there isn't sufficient emergency elevator provisions, we would put people with movement impairments, disabilities, into refuges, potentially, and then evacuate the rest of the people.

00:28:02.387 --> 00:28:22.865
So all of a sudden, the assumption that these two subpopulations have equivalent levels of life safety in a fire evacuation because potentially firefighters might come and rescue the people who are in the refuges that's gone because they're still in the building, potentially in harm's way, and so that's a very simple example.

00:28:22.865 --> 00:28:52.806
But there are many, many other examples that you could come up with where people could literally, you say, deliberately activate fire alarm system whether it's by pulling a switch or what's sent by to a bin and then getting people into a space where they're either less familiar or less protected, or the fire protection provisions in a staircase don't protect people from an attacker, and so the concepts of relative safety, sort of go out the door.

00:28:53.894 --> 00:29:25.464
Yeah, and I think automated announcements and automated evacuation messaging the idea that even if you had a sophisticated control room that had people in it who were managing a situation but they were heavily reliant in a fire situation and automated system giving announcements and providing instruction to people, it can be very tricky in a live dynamic attack scenario for that control room to remember that actually this automated system is probably pumping the following information into the building I need to stop it and override it and give people the reality.

00:29:25.464 --> 00:29:37.086
So if you had someone, a fire has been set off by an attacker in order to pump people out into a certain area, the automated announcements have started up in that control room.

00:29:37.086 --> 00:29:46.784
It can be very tricky to understand whether or not you know what people in the building think is going on and sort of correct them from that path that they're so used to, from their fire training.

00:29:46.784 --> 00:29:56.765
And the other issue that we've seen, particularly in looking at evacuations, drills, training and looking at it from a security perspective, is the idea of muster points.

00:29:56.765 --> 00:30:09.509
So you have your building evacuation, you've been doing the drill for years, everyone knows where they go to, they muster, they meet people with high vis, they wait around for 10 minutes, get a coffee and go back into the building, and that is so ingrained, certainly in our culture here.

00:30:09.509 --> 00:30:15.551
If that's an attack scenario and people think I've left the building, what am I programmed to do here?

00:30:15.551 --> 00:30:17.317
And try and assemble in a muster point.

00:30:17.757 --> 00:30:35.586
That can, of course, create a secondary target, and a sophisticated attacker might know that and do that on purpose, but even a non-sophisticated attacker could see that as an opportunity, and so there is also a need not just to have this idea of evacuation planning for security scenarios and attacks.

00:30:35.586 --> 00:30:38.858
It's about dispersal how are you going to get people away?

00:30:38.858 --> 00:30:42.493
And then what system are you going to use to check, check in on them?

00:30:42.493 --> 00:30:46.065
Right, so it could be a whatsapp group or it could be company teams or whatever.

00:30:46.515 --> 00:31:02.421
But this idea that actually you're giving people, empowering people, if they're in that situation, to get as far away as they can, or go to a public space, into a coffee shop, away from where the threat is, and check in with their workplace on their phones or similar, that's a completely different system.

00:31:02.421 --> 00:31:08.271
Again, but it's not effective to have 10 different procedures and expect everybody to remember them.

00:31:08.271 --> 00:31:11.060
So this is where the whole message around.

00:31:11.060 --> 00:31:20.808
Actually these things need to be thought of together, and it's just an emergency procedure, one of which is a fire emergency, another one of which could be a different type.

00:31:21.215 --> 00:31:25.105
You know, I'm used to have a certain level of robustness in fire safety tool.

00:31:25.105 --> 00:31:28.364
Sets Like a WhatsApp group does not sound very robust to me.

00:31:28.364 --> 00:31:31.704
It sounds like something like I have no control over who's actually in that group.

00:31:31.704 --> 00:31:33.269
I have no control if people's actually in that group.

00:31:33.269 --> 00:31:36.560
I have no control if people are answering live and so on.

00:31:36.560 --> 00:31:43.523
When I'm dealing with live safety systems, I must be certain, I must know where people well, I'm not tracing people in fire.

00:31:43.523 --> 00:31:48.789
Perhaps one day I will but at least I must have trust in the systems that I see.

00:31:48.809 --> 00:31:51.678
You've previously mentioned, for example, the role of CCTV cameras.

00:31:51.678 --> 00:31:55.948
Cctv cameras are perfect to be used for fire and smoke detection.

00:31:55.948 --> 00:32:11.029
We have a bazillion algorithms that help you detect smoke and fire with CCTV cameras, but they're not a part of fire safety systems because they don't go through rigorous testing and integration and everything as the fire automation would go.

00:32:11.029 --> 00:32:23.303
So you have like one ecosystem of the fire equipment you put into your building which is very sophisticated, certified, very precise, robust, resilient, but we don't want anyone to play with it.

00:32:23.303 --> 00:32:29.303
We don't want the manager to touch it in case of a fire because they can perhaps break it.

00:32:29.303 --> 00:32:33.300
And here, from your perspective, that you brought to the discussion.

00:32:33.300 --> 00:32:45.250
It's exactly that person who should be playing with that and making sure that they know what's happening around and how to intervene if the systems would be leading people into the wrong place.

00:32:45.250 --> 00:32:47.435
I find this extremely challenging.

00:32:47.455 --> 00:33:07.887
I think you're covering two different things here, but both very important, which is what systems are provided and safety critical systems that are provided at the building or by the management in the building to inform the response to an incident and how effective that response is.

00:33:07.928 --> 00:33:34.604
So let me give you an example that's specific to fire safety but is is dependent on tech, which is if you're having a fire evacuation and say, for instance, you've got a relatively sophisticated set detection and notification that building then and you want to just do a phased response or state eight, three point, five or whatever it is, the effectiveness of that system is not independent of the availability of social media.

00:33:35.115 --> 00:33:50.795
So you might only want to evacuate and you might design the building such that it assumes only draws are evacuated in chunks of three, but by the time they start moving, lots of other people in that building will be aware of what's going on because they'll start speaking to each other.

00:33:50.795 --> 00:33:56.146
So what you were talking about there is can we rely on something like social media?

00:33:56.146 --> 00:33:56.807
That is one thing.

00:33:56.807 --> 00:34:06.403
Another thing is does social media and modern technology influence the effectiveness of the stuff that you do rely on and that really it gets both?

00:34:06.403 --> 00:34:27.405
What do we need to be aware of in putting stuff in place so that we can rely on it, but also what systems are evolving and, like you said, the ecosystem of information that's available, that might be used anyway, whether we like it or not, and that directly affects the effectiveness, the evacuation or the procedural response, whatever it is.

00:34:28.195 --> 00:34:42.456
Yeah, I'm just worried that I have put in place a very sophisticated amount of equipment, very sophisticated stuff, and then a person based on cctv camera could potentially turn it off, or should turn it off.

00:34:42.456 --> 00:34:50.717
Now my question is should I allow that person and if yes, what should be my expectations towards the person?

00:34:50.717 --> 00:35:02.561
Because it cannot be you know, your random security guy guy on on the first day of his job I mean the amount of training and and those people are under extreme stress steve like this.

00:35:02.561 --> 00:35:09.322
This is an extremely stressful situation for the management and you know that people in stress, they narrow the vision.

00:35:09.322 --> 00:35:10.364
It's very difficult.

00:35:10.364 --> 00:35:21.588
So I wonder at what point I would be comfortable putting decision in the person's hand, being comfortable with my fire systems being fiddled with.

00:35:21.588 --> 00:35:23.338
That's my question.

00:35:23.880 --> 00:35:30.407
I think that well, the answer to that would vary depending on the nature of the building and the nature of the threat to which a building is subject.

00:35:30.407 --> 00:35:36.204
The level of the resources available will be very sensitive to the type of occupants we're talking about.

00:35:36.204 --> 00:35:42.635
A profile attractive target might need dedicated command and control centres.

00:35:42.635 --> 00:36:02.382
They may need very trained staff in order to both interpret what's going on and then intervene, whereas a small residential property might not be at the same levels of risk to, for instance, a terrorist attack, but they may be at risk to other forms of criminal attack or other security response.

00:36:02.382 --> 00:36:22.304
But I think that becomes all the more important as the building becomes more complex and is more exposed to a range of different fire and security threats.

00:36:22.445 --> 00:36:25.021
I would say but that would be the same for fire right.

00:36:25.021 --> 00:36:26.802
Like for a small residential building.

00:36:26.802 --> 00:36:31.523
You'd also have a limited amount of fire automation and everything, and it grows with complexity.

00:36:31.675 --> 00:37:24.427
So I guess those things could go hand by hand but, but also also, though, in in you could have a relatively small residential building that has very few resources, of means of managing fire safety or evacuation, but they may be subject, you know, if it's in a poor area with you know socioeconomic issues, then they may be subject to lots of security issues-profile events in which even sophisticated fire safety systems of a building would have been literally turned off, put on a manual mode.

00:37:24.875 --> 00:37:41.177
There would be like a bunch of firefighters in the place and skilled professionals to handle that, because they were worried that if it goes wrong because of, let's say, a false fire alarm, that's going to be a bigger threat than a fire could be, because they knew how to handle fire.

00:37:41.177 --> 00:37:59.485
So I wonder how much of what we do as fire safety engineers can be influenced from those new trends or those new challenges that the security objectives are facing, how open we need to be to this, because you bring this topic to me and for me it's completely new.

00:37:59.485 --> 00:38:09.514
So I assume it could be the case for many fire safety engineers who never considered those objectives, how much of our world this will be in the future and how we adapt to that world.

00:38:09.855 --> 00:38:11.077
I mean certainly in the UK.

00:38:11.077 --> 00:38:24.059
It's very likely there's going to be a sea change with the introduction of new legislation, which is known as Martin's Law to protect duty, which means that it's been working its way through Parliament, but with the change of government now it's been held up.

00:38:24.059 --> 00:38:43.186
But the idea is that it could be in place next year and that will require buildings that host the public, so not necessarily residential, but those that have spaces that can hold members of the public will have to have a counterterrorism plan in place or a security plan to demonstrate how they would respond if an incident like that did happen.

00:38:43.186 --> 00:38:55.335
And I think that's always been the challenge, because with fire safety legislation and requirements there's always been a need for people to think about this and it's increasingly front of mind now within recent years.

00:38:55.335 --> 00:39:18.597
But as it starts to become more either required formally with legislation or just more prevalent in people's thinking, I think we're going to have to see more integration between these two systems Because for the first time organisations are going to have to show yes, I've got my fire safety systems tick, yes, I my evacuation plan, but I also have a security plan, and they work together, whereas at the moment that's not an actual requirement.

00:39:18.657 --> 00:39:24.280
So the idea is that, well, the hope is that if the uk sort of start without that thinking, that might then then spread elsewhere.

00:39:24.583 --> 00:39:55.338
So I think, firstly, that what there is going to be a shift around the need to do it and then the way to do it is going to have to be more integrated working, because, again, as you say, you know, so many fire safety professionals won't have thought about the systems they're putting in with this lens on, but their clients and the people who are building buildings and operating buildings will now be thinking that way, and therefore it's not necessarily about being able to do both, but it's being able to understand enough and be able to work with security consultants to get to the right answer.

00:39:55.338 --> 00:40:06.403
And I'm really excited about this coming together of disciplines, because so often we see these again the same objective in terms of preservation of life, but being done in two very, very different ways and seeing them clash.

00:40:06.403 --> 00:40:19.882
I think there's room here for innovation, there's room here for bringing the best of the fire world and the best of the security world together to say, ok, let's solve a problem that's bigger than we're used to, but it's going to require joined up thinking.

00:40:20.375 --> 00:40:26.407
And there's going to need to be tool development and data development and regulatory development all happening at the same time.

00:40:26.735 --> 00:40:27.376
And I think I did.

00:40:27.376 --> 00:40:36.442
That last point is critical because we run down certain parts based on the regulatory requirements for dealing with a particular problem.

00:40:36.442 --> 00:40:45.762
So in FIRE we have prescriptive approaches or performance-based approaches, objective-based risk assessment, whatever, but assuming it involves some sort of tools.

00:40:45.762 --> 00:40:57.385
We have tools that are developed so I'll talk about evacuation here that can say, well, if you have to dump this building or if you have to evacuate this building, or if you have to evacuate this building in some form, we can quantify that to some degree.

00:40:57.385 --> 00:41:05.364
But even in those they're good at that, I would say, but they're not particularly good at predicting when people's response to certain queues.

00:41:06.215 --> 00:41:07.380
We tend to drive that.

00:41:07.380 --> 00:41:11.146
We put some data in and we say, well, people take this long to evacuate and then they move.

00:41:11.146 --> 00:41:19.041
Now that becomes all the more complex if all of a sudden we're trying to predict how people respond to different types of it.

00:41:19.041 --> 00:41:26.561
And you know, 580 is pretty far advanced in terms of tool of aidability and modeling, and so there's lessons that can be learned.

00:41:26.561 --> 00:41:45.989
But I think in general, if you're talking about a much bigger picture of what constitutes a threat to the population of a building, then estimating, predicting people's response, becomes much more challenging, and that's a vast area of research that's only just starting to be examined in the last five or 10 years.

00:41:46.614 --> 00:41:52.402
Can you give me some examples how security can affect fire safety and vice versa, perhaps?

00:41:52.923 --> 00:41:53.405
Yeah, sure.

00:41:53.405 --> 00:42:11.023
So if you have, for example, access control to your site, so you're trying to monitor the people coming in, check that everyone's got the right accreditation, so you're doing that for a security reason to stop unauthorized access to your site, you might even have search and screening right To stop prohibited items going in.

00:42:11.023 --> 00:42:12.961
All of that needs infrastructure.

00:42:12.961 --> 00:42:19.326
So it could be gates where people scan their passes, or it could be those mag and bag arches for search and screening.

00:42:19.326 --> 00:42:22.204
All of that requires a design right.

00:42:22.204 --> 00:42:23.902
So you've got an entrance space that has a design.

00:42:23.902 --> 00:42:28.882
But again it's very similar to the Bollard example I gave you earlier with hostile vehicle mitigation.

00:42:28.882 --> 00:42:31.963
From an evacuation perspective, they are barriers.

00:42:31.963 --> 00:42:36.681
You know whether it's your gates or your mag and bag arches or tables or barriers or walls.

00:42:36.681 --> 00:42:40.559
If you're trying to stop people get in, then you are restricting the width for people who are leaving.

00:42:40.559 --> 00:42:49.682
And the most sort of clear example of this is in the sort of stadium and major event world where you might need a whole range of barriers for people entering and then they're removed for exit.

00:42:49.682 --> 00:42:56.300
But actually what happens if there was an event during that entrance process where people had to turn around and go back through those barriers.

00:42:56.300 --> 00:43:06.606
So these things that you put in for security reasons to check people's access, to stop prohibited items, can then inhibit an emergency response in a fire or a different type of emergency.

00:43:06.606 --> 00:43:10.139
And that's the same for the hostile vehicle mitigation stuff.

00:43:10.139 --> 00:43:23.728
And also, if you need certain types of infrastructure to protect against blasts, to have sort of reinforced materials, et cetera, that can change the design of the space and then the design can either support or inhibit flow people getting out.

00:43:23.728 --> 00:43:27.824
So there's those considerations, there's sort of physical security considerations.

00:43:27.824 --> 00:43:39.585
And then of course it's about you know how rigorous your search methodology is, because of course, if it's not very good and you're trying to get people through very quickly, you might enable pyrotechnics or similar to get in and that can change your fire risk.

00:43:39.585 --> 00:43:41.119
So it works both ways.

00:43:42.655 --> 00:43:56.507
From a procedural perspective, the ability to lock down, I think, is a really key interaction with fire and we're seeing a lot of tension working particularly with retail stores who are very interested in being able to lock down to protect their people and protect what they're selling.

00:43:56.507 --> 00:43:59.878
And particularly in the US, you know, where you have active shooter incidents.

00:43:59.878 --> 00:44:09.181
It's not a terrorist attack, but it could be an armed shooter or it could indeed be a robbery, but the question is about whether or not you can lock members of staff and public into those stores.

00:44:09.181 --> 00:44:16.806
And, of course, fire codes, depending on jurisdiction, et cetera, will typically require that you have the ability for people to be able to escape.

00:44:16.867 --> 00:44:21.280
If there's a fire and there is a tension there between, can you automatically lock everyone in?

00:44:21.280 --> 00:44:23.485
How can they escape if there is a fire?

00:44:23.485 --> 00:44:27.628
What's more risky the armed attack outside or the potential for a fire inside?

00:44:27.628 --> 00:44:33.706
What if, through the gunshots, the fire system has triggered erroneously, etc?

00:44:33.706 --> 00:44:35.782
There's a whole consideration there.

00:44:35.782 --> 00:44:45.606
So I think looking at Sire evacuation and escape versus lockdown is one really, really crucial area that's currently being looked at.

00:44:46.036 --> 00:44:47.164
Especially in evacuation.

00:44:47.164 --> 00:44:56.320
We have a lot of those devices that we would put next to the doors, like panic bars are an example, or door release buttons we often have those next to the doors like panic bars are an example or door release buttons we often have those next to the doors.

00:44:56.320 --> 00:45:06.715
So if you have a door locked in by the building management system, you can break the glass and unlock the door, because in case of emergency, the door will unlock.

00:45:06.715 --> 00:45:12.288
What if the security reasons require me to remove those features of the building?

00:45:12.288 --> 00:45:17.184
What can I propose to improve the evacuation if I have to do that?

00:45:17.565 --> 00:45:18.387
Well, there's two questions.

00:45:18.387 --> 00:45:23.855
One is can you engineer a safe evacuation, which can often be done procedurally or by creating other spaces?

00:45:23.855 --> 00:45:26.063
The other question is will it be code compliant?

00:45:26.063 --> 00:45:28.503
And that is where there is a great space now.

00:45:28.503 --> 00:45:31.835
I think a lot of this comes down to people and training of people and stuff.

00:45:31.835 --> 00:45:39.920
I think a lot of this comes down to people and training of people and stuff, because if you keep your break bar, your break glass or your push button or your, what are they called?

00:45:40.219 --> 00:45:40.800
Panic bar.

00:45:40.800 --> 00:45:42.340
What a beautiful name, right.

00:45:42.780 --> 00:45:43.422
Panic bars.

00:45:43.422 --> 00:45:45.001
Oh, I don't like the word panic.

00:45:45.001 --> 00:45:46.682
No, I'm a human behavior person.

00:45:46.682 --> 00:45:47.402
I don't like panic.

00:45:47.402 --> 00:45:49.143
I'm going to call it push bar.

00:45:49.143 --> 00:46:04.150
I think you can keep that as long as your staff are trained to not open it If they've been told there's an attack happening outside, if they've been told it's safe for inside, if they are aware of the procedure, they know their role in the procedure and that that's there just in case.

00:46:04.150 --> 00:46:06.572
But please don't press it because it's safe for not to.

00:46:06.572 --> 00:46:11.496
I think a lot of this comes down to the human element, right, it's around the trick of staff and in.

00:46:11.518 --> 00:46:28.112
In that way, you can be code compliant and also have a functional lockdown system one thing I have not brought yet into the discussion, but if we are dealing with fire in the building, you know and of course, our building response to the fire the evacuation is happening, but you also have the response from the firefighting department.

00:46:28.112 --> 00:46:31.842
Like you expect, the firefighters will come to the building and address that.

00:46:31.842 --> 00:46:45.889
Now, if there's an emergency security emergency in the building, I assume you also would have some sort of response by authorities, and it's also something that has to play along.

00:46:45.889 --> 00:47:00.201
Right that the building has to play along with the needs of the response team in terms of guiding them, in terms of opening or locking the paths that are needed, in terms of making them, in terms of opening or locking the paths that are needed, in terms of making sure that they're addressing the needs of the population that's at the biggest risk, right?

00:47:00.201 --> 00:47:05.672
Is this also something that you have been looking into and addressing in your strategies?

00:47:06.275 --> 00:47:06.375
Yeah.

00:47:06.375 --> 00:47:12.083
So let's say you had a multi-layered event, so you've got fire happening but also an attack happening.

00:47:12.083 --> 00:47:12.858
Live the timeline around.

00:47:12.858 --> 00:47:14.614
You know you send your also an attack happening, live the timeline around.

00:47:14.614 --> 00:47:17.367
You know you send your firefighters in and deal with the fire.

00:47:17.367 --> 00:47:31.338
When it's just a fire will be completely different in that you wouldn't send a firefighter in and it wouldn't be fought until the attacker had been apprehended, until they'd been, until the attack had concluded, and therefore the potential for the fire spread is bigger.

00:47:31.338 --> 00:47:32.481
It's going to take longer before.

00:47:32.481 --> 00:47:41.099
Longer before a firefighter would be able to be on scene and, yes, you'd have different emergency services on scene, depending on the nature of the attack might have an armed response, and then it's a crime scene.

00:47:41.099 --> 00:47:42.581
It's not just a regular fire.

00:47:42.581 --> 00:47:46.465
After that it's a crime scene and a fire that would have to be taken care of.

00:47:46.465 --> 00:47:49.846
So those things happening in the same environment are really really challenging.

00:47:49.846 --> 00:48:10.563
But yes, it's again around that building response and working with the emergency services to communicate what's happening, to help them in their response and then also, before they arrive, to try and save people in the building, because of course, if you're in a security control room and you've called the police because something's happening.

00:48:10.563 --> 00:48:30.742
Depending on where you live and how close whether it's a rural location or a metropolitan location it can take 10, 20, 30, 40, whatever minutes before you have the appropriate response on site and therefore it's the building's response that has the potential to save lives in those first few minutes where we know most casualties and fatalities lie.

00:48:30.742 --> 00:48:39.097
But that person, as you've said, the amount of training that's required for them to be able to understand, particularly if there's a fire in that building okay, the fire's here.

00:48:39.097 --> 00:48:43.420
I'm aware of compartmentation, I'm aware of how quickly it might spread and I'm aware of where people are.

00:48:43.420 --> 00:48:45.606
In my building the attack's happening over here.

00:48:45.606 --> 00:48:46.856
I'm aware of where it's happening.

00:48:46.856 --> 00:48:48.679
What am I going to tell people to do?

00:48:48.679 --> 00:48:56.268
You know that is an incredibly challenging position and, again, has been traditionally separated from fire until very recently.

00:48:56.268 --> 00:49:18.449
So you know, working through those procedures and operations and the associated systems is something that's you know is happening now and, as Steve said, particularly the predictive tools and the tools that have been developed in the fire safety community for the last 30, 40, 50 years are now being for the first time adapted and pivoted towards the security challenge.

00:49:19.014 --> 00:49:26.036
Not yet, I haven't yet seen the dual fire and attack scenario because that's so incredibly complicated.

00:49:26.036 --> 00:49:29.708
But there's a lot of very fundamental research that needs to take place.

00:49:29.708 --> 00:49:34.617
You know the area of human behavior in fire still has big gaps in it that we want to fill.

00:49:34.617 --> 00:49:43.663
But human behavior in attack scenarios is even more diverse and even the human behavior in fire sort of timeline can still be put in that linear timeline.

00:49:43.663 --> 00:49:45.637
We know people's pre-evacuation behaviors.

00:49:45.637 --> 00:49:50.574
We know they collect their belongings, we know they delay but then they leave and then it's a lovely lie.

00:49:51.110 --> 00:49:52.998
Your podcast listeners won't be able to see me draw a line.

00:49:52.998 --> 00:50:03.501
Yes, when you're looking at a dynamic environment which could happen over a much longer period of time could be hours where people are moving from location to location to try and escape.

00:50:03.501 --> 00:50:06.146
They're doing different actions, they're communicating with each other.

00:50:06.146 --> 00:50:09.605
Steve mentioned social media, which is a massive influencing factor as well.

00:50:09.605 --> 00:50:15.460
It's not just the building that's in control of the information that people receive and what they might believe is the right response.

00:50:15.460 --> 00:50:21.653
The dynamics of that is so complicated and thankfully it's very rare, but it's so rare that it's hard to study.

00:50:21.653 --> 00:50:33.903
We've had enough science and enough drills that you can collect a really good picture from a fire safety perspective, but from a terrorist attack perspective or other security incident perspective, that data is not quite there.

00:50:33.903 --> 00:50:38.094
So filling that gap with modelling is going to be something I think that we'll see in the next 10 years.

00:50:38.530 --> 00:50:40.557
I'm just going back to some of them.

00:50:40.557 --> 00:50:45.436
So why should we look at it in a more integrated way, in addition to what you could just say?

00:50:45.436 --> 00:50:54.681
If you don't treat it, the building is like a complex system where things have a knock-on effect and things interact and produce outcomes, merging conditions.

00:50:54.681 --> 00:51:18.590
Knock-on effect and things interact and produce outcomes, merge in conditions, then, first of all, you might be missing those connections and effects which we've been talking about, which can be extremely significant and can mean that you either totally misidentify the nature of the problem, deploy the wrong resources and potentially tell people or get people to do the wrong thing, depending on how badly you mischaracterize the scenario, or get people to do the wrong thing, depending on how badly you mischaracterize the scenario.

00:51:18.590 --> 00:51:29.389
It might also mean that the systems that you put in place and spend money on might not use the sort of the you might miss out on redundancies that might be available, or you might misapply some of the technologies that you've got in the building.

00:51:29.389 --> 00:51:52.742
So you might want, instead of having four different communications or three different means of monitoring and detecting and sort of in-house decision-making, you might just need one that has access to all of the information available and then has a sort of a more complex or more sophisticated decision-making process and means of assessing the scenario and responding, rather than having three or four different teams doing that.

00:51:53.110 --> 00:51:59.041
Now, that's very difficult and I'm not at one moment underestimating the issues there.

00:51:59.041 --> 00:52:19.922
Well, I think that one of the consequences of this type of view is you want a hub, potentially with many layers of defense, but a hub that can say how well is this building, how operational is this building and what's the nature of the perturbation that's going on, that's affecting people.

00:52:19.922 --> 00:52:23.860
It could be fire, it could be a pandemic, it could be an attack, it could be whatever.

00:52:23.860 --> 00:52:31.353
But what's the wellness of that building and how do we address that on a day-to-day basis and what are the tools available to us?

00:52:31.353 --> 00:52:41.679
And if you get an integrated system, rather than having, well, who's dealing with the air conditioning, who's dealing with the fire safety, who's dealing with the security, then you've probably got a better starting point.

00:52:41.679 --> 00:52:44.038
I'm not underestimating how tough that is.

00:52:44.570 --> 00:52:55.271
I resonate with the fact that you have different systems, but I struggle with the fact you would have different teams, like I struggle with the fact you would have responsibility in different teams.

00:52:55.271 --> 00:53:01.494
If they are not integrated, they may have overlapping actions that could contradict each other.

00:53:01.815 --> 00:53:03.436
Who's got responsibility, you know.

00:53:03.436 --> 00:53:06.757
So here's an example the fire alarm goes off at an airport.

00:53:06.757 --> 00:53:08.237
A trash can is on fire.

00:53:08.237 --> 00:53:09.599
What's the nature of the event?

00:53:09.599 --> 00:53:13.139
First response well, it's a fire, obviously because we'll send the fire service out.

00:53:13.139 --> 00:53:21.804
But actually maybe it was deliberate and maybe someone's going to go and start another event, or maybe they're just trying to distract or cause an evacuation, and then it's a security event.

00:53:21.804 --> 00:53:30.487

170 - Integrating Fire Safety and Security Objectives with Stewe Gwynne and Aoife Hunt

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