Episodes
March 9, 2022
041 - Sprinkler and safety systems reliability with Arnstein Fedoy
How reliable are sprinkler systems? Is it 100%? Is it 95%? Maybe it is 88%... actually, whatever the number is, do we truly understand what does it represent? What does it mean that a sprinkler has succeeded and what does it…
March 2, 2022
040 - Resilient road tunnel infrastructure with Ingo Riess
This week I've invited a guest, that I was looking to talk to for a good while... Dr Ingo Riess from Riess Ingenieur-GmbH is someone I look up to in the field of tunnel fire safety, in which I am very active in the last few …
Feb. 23, 2022
039 - The (near) future of modelling with a tool developer Bryan Klein
What does the future hold? Probably no one knows. But what happens in near future with some of the most popular tools used by the FSE community? That is a great question to a tool developer - Bryan Klein of Thunderhead Engin…
Feb. 15, 2022
038 - Fire resistance is not always enough for timber with Daniel Brandon
It is the third time we talk about mass timber and fire in this show, and I hope every time the message gets even more refined. In this episode, it is clear - fire resistance is not always enough. But why? You will learn tha…
Feb. 9, 2022
037 - Human behavior misconceptions that lead to (mis)modelling with Enrico Ronchi
If you were investigating phenomena and built your whole narrative around a flawed and debunked concept, would that get published? Would that get cited? Would that be recognized? Many of us would say an obvious *no*, but tha…
Feb. 2, 2022
036 - Researching fire with firefighters - UL FSRI: Steve Kerber and Craig Weinschenk
In this episode I was really happy to host two amazing researchers from UL FSRI - Dr Steve Kerber, the VP of Underwriter Laboratories and Director of UL Fire Safety Research Institute, and Dr Craig Weinschenk, research engin…
Jan. 26, 2022
035 - Fire safety as cornerstone of sustainability with Margaret McNamee
Building a fire-safe future is not an easy task. Including sustainability in that build, is even harder. But how hard is it to include fire safety in the discussion, when sustainability itself is a goal? Does sustainability …
Jan. 19, 2022
034 - Fire safety as a human right, not a privilege with Danielle Antonellis
There are topics in fire science that gain more attention than others. Timber in fire. Batteries. Facades. They are novel, complex, challenging and yet as engineers, we must handle them in our everyday job. But are they impo…
Jan. 12, 2022
033 - Science, theatre or engineering? Polish take on hot smoke test with Piotr Smardz and Janusz Paliszek
Have you ever heard about the hot smoke testing approach? If you had, there is a great chance you have not heard anything positive about it... From our experience, this method is often downplayed as useless, unrealistic and …
Dec. 22, 2021
032 - Closing the year with a look back on 2021 and forward to the future!
Welcome to the final episode of this year! I hope you all had a great year. For me, it was probably the most challenging, and the most rewarding year of my whole professional career. Join me in this episode recollecting the …
Dec. 15, 2021
031 - Suppressing tunnel fires with water mist with Johny Jessen
Can water mist be used in tunnels? I wondered that for a long time, and with every tunnel project, many questions around this issue were piling in my head. When dealing with large infrastructure projects you really need to w…
Dec. 8, 2021
030 - Visibility Prediction Framework with Lukas Arnold
If you ever had anything to do with Fire Safety Engineering, you have most likely touched the visibility in smoke. What's an easier way to explain how bad the conditions are inside of a building than saying how much smoke wa…
Dec. 1, 2021
029 -Busses, flammability and an unknown force holding good solutions back... with Anja Hofmann-Böllinghaus
This is not a fun episode. It starts with a tragedy, that fueled a whole field of research. Continues into disbelief, that one aspect of fire safety can be at the same chosen as the sole foundation of fire safety within a br…
Nov. 24, 2021
028 - Easy entry into the world of AI in fire with MZ Naser
Have you ever been fascinated by the capabilities of AI? Did you wonder how the heck can an algorithm beat humans in repetitive tasks? Or make multi-level correlations that we would never be able to figure out? I was as well…
Nov. 17, 2021
027 - Travelling fires with Guillermo Rein
If you have ever learned about the compartment fire dynamics framework, have tried zone modelling or any kind of fire modelling, you have probably noticed that as the compartments get bigger, the less uniform conditions insi…
Nov. 10, 2021
026 - Field report from IWMA conference in Warsaw
Thanks to the courtesy of the International Water Mist Association I have been invited to the recent conference held in Warsaw. The conference was a two-day event focused on water mist technology. In fact, it was the 20th me…
Nov. 3, 2021
025 - Structural fire engineering with engineered timber with Felix Wiesner
In Episode 18 we have touched on the important topic of fire performance of engineered wood and its wide use in the modern built environment. Today, we follow up on this subject with Dr Felix Wiesner from the University of …
Oct. 27, 2021
024 - Who's a Fire Safety Engineer with Jimmy Jönsson
Who is a Fire Safety Engineer? And when do you become one? How do you know the person on the other side of the table at the project meeting has the necessary competencies to judge fire safety solutions of a building you desi…
Oct. 20, 2021
023 - Risk assessment with Maximum Allowable Damage with Jaime Cadena Gomez and David Lange
Risk as a concept is well established in modern Performance-Based Design in Fire Safety Engineering. However, it comes in many flavours - from a simple calculation of consequences vs probability, through indexing methods and…
Oct. 13, 2021
022 - Combustion, fluid mechanics and fire safety engineering with Michael Gollner
https://firelab.berkeley.edu/ this is the place you need to go! Ignition at different slope angles. Firebrand spotting. Fire whirls. What does connect these various fire phenomena? They are all driven by fluid dynamics and c…
Oct. 5, 2021
021 - Resilient design for firefighter safety with Ali Ashrafi
It is hard for us, fire safety engineers, to talk to firefighters on how to do their job... Probably we even shouldn't, as we have no idea how it is to truly go there into the heat and battle fire to save lives. But it does …
Sept. 29, 2021
020 - Fire Safety Engineering as a socio-technical system with Brian Meacham
Do you sometimes feel that fire safety engineering is not making a footprint as it should? With all our knowledge, models, technology...why do huge fires exist? Why fire is such a threat to billions of humans? In today's epi…
Sept. 21, 2021
019 - Modelling human behaviour in wildfire evacuation with Erica Kuligowski
There is plenty of fire engineers who think they are modelling human behaviour... Some claim they can do it... And there is very, very few who actually did and succeeded with it. One of them is today's guest, Dr Erica Kuligo…
Sept. 15, 2021
018 - Engineered timber with Danny Hopkin
Engineered timber is on a trajectory to become the construction material of the future. However, on that pathway there stands the fire issue. Wood burns, it is inevitable. This is something we must accept, and learn to work …