SiF 2014 – New city, new conference sessions, same old story?

Views from a post-doc

The 8^th international conference on Structures in Fire was held in the massive and ever changing city of Shanghai from 11^th to 13^th June 2014. A large delegation from Edinburgh attended the conference, many for their first taste of this conference series, and many of the delegation had the opportunity to present their research, with 7 oral papers and one poster paper being presented.  The conference attracted over 250 delegates from all around the world (apart, yet again, from Africa).

Bund - Shanghai (Copyright D.Rush)

This year 282 two-page extended abstracts were submitted and reviewed by the scientific committee, with around 150 papers being selected for the 80+ oral and 60+ poster presentations.  All of the research that was presented, whether through a poster or oral presentation, also had an 8-page research paper included within the conference proceedings, which rightly gives all the papers the same level of rigour for a conference striving to present the most current research being performed in the area of structures in fire, and the organisers should be commended for this.

The high number of accepted papers meant that for the first time in the history of this conference series, parallel sessions were introduced during the middle part of each day.  Whilst members of the SiF community may be strongly for or strongly against having parallel sessions, I personally can see the positives and negatives. More papers can be accepted, if their quality is good enough, and it means that sessions can be more specialised. However, parallel sessions also mean that the delegates are split, and as delegates at such a niche conference it can be very hard to choose which session to attend; I found myself popping in and out of the sessions to view alternate presentations and thus missing their starts due to different time keeping in the sessions. Parallel sessions also stopped delegates from engaging in more holistic debates, which can happen in single session conferences.

Conference Proceedings (Copyright D.Rush)

The high number of accepted oral presentations also had a negative effect on the presentation of the posters.  In Zurich for SiF 2012, those delegates with posters had five minutes to present their work, after which they were able answer more in depth questions over tea and coffee.  This format worked really well, but was unfortunately not adopted in Shanghai, probably due to the fact that more time was required to accommodate the larger number of oral presentations. This meant that, although the posters were accompanied by research papers, they were relegated to a consolation status, being presented in a short 40 minute session over tea and coffee.     

All the research papers were accepted for this conference on the basis of a two-page abstract.  This is not a full paper due to the desire of this conference series to include the most up to date research.  However, the 282 two-page abstracts submitted must have taken a lot of time to review by the scientific committee, which aims to have at least 3 reviews for each submission. In the 6 weeks between submission and notifying the authors of the decisions made, the 52 reviewers from on the scientific committee each reviewed on average 15+ abstracts on a wide variety of topics, collated all the reviews, and decided which abstracts to invite to present full papers. This is no easy task and not conducive to high quality control, and as in Zürich, some questions were raised by a number of fellow delegates over the review process and the quality of the oral papers being presented. The main issues worthy of consideration after this conference are the same as in Zurich, and to quote from my previous Blog after the SiF 2012 conference (none of which are unique to the SiF conference series):

1.  Too many papers lacked novel or significant context:

Many of the presented papers struggled to inform the listener of why they should care about the work being presented; there was little context to the work provided in most cases. Even the most engaging presentations and presenters frustrated delegates by not clearly saying at any point why the work was done and why one should care about it. The main question that needs to be answered is who benefits from the research apart from those doing the research?

2.  The lost art of presenting:

Too many of the presentations were difficult to follow and were easy to disengage from with which detracted from the discussions, as instead of collective expertise being used to further research and how to apply it in the real world, questions were being asked simply for clarification rather than for extension.  For the presentations that were presented well constructive discussions generally followed.  There were three trends that could be seen when comparing the good and bad discussions.

i.  Language barrier – Many of those who did not have a good grasp of English, the chosen language of the conference, struggled to communicate their work effectively. In some cases such presenters resorted to simply reading their slides. This problem is admittedly very hard to solve. The post presentation questioning was particularly problematic.

ii.  Hard to see the forest through the trees – many of the presenters had graphs or images, on which they would be making a comment, but rarely did they explain what the graph or image was showing or representing.  For those who aren’t experts in the area (which should be a large portion of the audience if the research being presented is at the cutting edge of the science), there would be no way of understanding what they were looking at.

iii.  Mathematical blindness – as was evident with the images, there were too many equations with not enough explanation, and in some case there were too many equations to even keep track of.  The effect of this was to turn the slide in to a blur of black and white with little apparent meaning.

3.    The works presented in the papers, for the most part, was not directly assessed by review:

With the papers being presented on the basis of only a 2-page abstract, the actual work presented in the 8-page papers was hardly critiqued at all, nor rigorously assessed, but likely only checked for editorial issues.  This led to the quality of many papers being presented being lower than it really should have been be for the SiF conference series. 

One thing that has changed for the better since SiF 2012 in Zurich is that this SiF conference did include a number of delegates from industry and consultancy, with the conference being sponsored by a fire protection paint manufacturer, International Paint Ltd. However most of the delegates and presenters were academics, myself included. Without delegates from consultancy and industry, those who apply the information in the real world and lead us to the critical and relevant areas of research, we fool ourselves that we are doing a good job because we lose perspective and context to our work and presentations. Our work becomes self-satisfying rather than industry leading, and we end up producing redundant, sometimes pointless knowledge, that in practice will never be applied.

So where could we go to improve the SiF Movement?

First, we need to increase the quality of the papers presented, which could be done by either papers selected and reviewed on full paper submissions rather than on 2-page abstracts, and/or increasing the number (or quality) of reviewers to reduce the workload on the scientific committee and improve the quality control. There should also be some guidance/template for the abstracts to help the authors highlight the relevance of their work. 

Second, we need to improve the quality of the presentations, and we could provide some guidelines for the presentations including, amongst other things, stipulations that if you are presenting graphs and equations that you explain clearly what the audience is looking at, and why they are looking at it.  If the quality of the work is good enough and the presentation of it clear, then issues of language are significantly lessened.

Third, to improve the discussions around the cutting edge research being presented, allow access to the proceedings (digitally would be preferable) a week before the conference so those who wish can read papers and prepare questions. We could also change the question time format and have a series of presentations around a theme and then a general discussion on all the presentations rather than each individually.

Fourth, we need to remain relevant to the construction industry.  One way of doing this is to invite our industrial partners to join us and invite them to speak on the subjects that they feel are of major concern to them.  They could be designers, consultants, materials suppliers, architects, practitioners, and we could discuss what matters to them and to the broader building design industry, rather than existing in an isolated academic bubble with few industrialists present.

Finally, as we grow we need the leadership to grow, and I believe that we need new members on the steering committee to help guide the conference in the future. 

If we improve the quality and directly indicate the relevance of the research which is being conducted, improve the way we present it and allow more time for more informed discussions, we can grow, become more relevant, and remain the world leading forum for Structures in Fire.

David Rush

SiF 2014 conference - Shanghai: Paper and Posters

A strong Edinburgh delegation presented several papers at the 8th International Conference on Structures in Fire, held in Shanghai in June 2014.  The titles and authors of the papers are listed below (Edinburgh authors highlighted in bold), and the proceedings of the conference can be found at http://www.structuresinfire.com/

Title: Towards fragility analysis for structural fire resistance: residual capacity of concrete columns
Authors: D. Rush, L. Bisby, I. Ioannou and T. Rossetto
Proceeding pages: 459 - 466

Title: Deformation and response of continuous and restrained post-tensioned concrete slabs at high temperatures
Authors: J. Gales and L. Bisby
Proceeding pages: 305 - 312

Title: Software firelab for probabilistic analysis of steel-framed structures in fire
Authors: S. Devaney, A. Usmani and C.S. Manohar
Proceeding pages: 919 - 926

Title: Selection criteria of fire scenarios for buildings
Authors: I.Del Prete, G. Cefarelli, A. Ferraro, E. Nigro and D. Sannino
Proceeding pages: 1079 - 1086

Title: Punching shear of restrained reinforced concrete slabs under fire conditions
Authors: H.K.M. Smith, T. J. Stratford and L. Bisby
Proceeding pages: 443 - 450

Title: Evaluating design guidance for intumescent fire protection of concrete filled structural hollow sections
Authors: D. Rush, L. Bisby and A. Jowsey
Proceeding pages: 1071 - 1078

Title: High temperature performance of sustainable concrete with recycled concrete aggregates
Authors: J. Gales, T. Parker, M.F. Green, D. Cree and L. Bisby
Proceeding pages: 1203 - 1210

Title: Mechanical properties of fibre reinforced polymer reinforcement for concrete at high temperature
Authors: E. McIntyre, A. Bilotta, L. Bisby and E. Nigro
Proceeding pages: 1227 - 1234

Title: Experimental and numerical studies on damage mechanisms in cementitious coatings on structural steel members
Authors: S.W. Chen, L.M. Jiang, A. Usmani and G.Q. Li
Proceeding pages: 1251 - 1258

Title: Analytical solutions for nonlinear response of plates under thermal loading
Authors: P. Khazaeinejad and A. Usmani
Proceeding pages: 969 - 978

Title: Post-fire residual capacity of protected and unprotected concrete filled steel hollow columns
Authors: D. Rush, L. Bisby and A. Jowsey
Proceeding pages: 435 - 442

Title: Influence of ductility on the behaviour of RC frames in post-earthquake fire 
Authors: Asif H. Shah, Praveen Kamath, Umesh K. Sharma, Pradeep Bhargava, Asif Usmani, GR Reddy, Tarvinder Singh and Hitesh Lakhani
Proceeding pages: 279 - 286


Title: Calibration of a simplified method for fire resistance assessment of partially encased composite beams
Authors: E. Nigro, I.D. Prete, D. Sannino and G. Cefarelli
Proceeding pages: 713 - 720

Title: Fire-induced progressive collapse of braced steel structures
Authors: J. Jiang, G.Q. Li and A. Usmani
Proceeding pages: 887 - 894

Title: An opensees-based integrated tool for modelling structures in realistic design fires
Authors: L.M. Jiang, Y.Q. Jiang, J. Jiang, A. Usmani and S.W. Chen
Proceeding pages: 987 - 994

Title: A novel test method for the study of structures in fire (topic: experimental studies)
Authors: C. Maluk and L. Bisby
Proceeding pages: 1063 - 1070

Title: Fire safety check of existing tall office buildings applying fire engineering approach: a case study
Authors: E. Nigro, I. D.Prete, G. Cefarelli, Anna Ferraro, Domenico Sannino and Gaetano Manfredi
Proceeding pages: 1087 - 1094

6th International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security (ISTSS)

I attended the 6th International Symposium on Tunnel Safety and Security last week (Wed 12th to Friday 14th March 2014). The venue was the 'World Trade Centre' in Marseille, France. Despite the number in the title, this was actually the 7th in a series of tunnel safety conferences organised by SP, the Swedish National Testing and Research Institute, and the 5th of them that I'd attended. The conferences are held approximately every second year and the next will be in Canada in March 2016.

I attended the original "Catastrophic Fires" symposium  (2003, Borås) as well as the 3rd (2008, Stockholm), 4th (2010; Frankfurt) and 5th (2012; New York) ISTSS gatherings. This conference, like the last few, was attended by well over 200 delegates from all around the globe, although the majority this time came from European countries. In general I found the presentations, discussions and debates at this conference better and more engaging than at either of the last two.

At previous conferences, the topic of water spray systems for fire protection and suppression was considered to be a 'niche' area, sometimes relegated to the smaller parallel session. That was not the case this time, with the 'Fixed Fire Fighting Systems' (FFFS) session being in the main room on the first morning of the conference. The opening keynote address by Magnus Arvidson from SP proposed a new set of 'performance objectives' for a standard test of the capabilities of water spray systems for tunnels. Much of what he said paralleled my keynote presentation on "Mitigation of Tunnel Fires" from the NYC conference 2 years ago, but some of the objectives he discussed appeared (to me at least) to imply a bias in the standard against water mist systems. Other presentations on FFFS were a mixed bag containing details of some new tests I wasn't previously aware of, through to some doubtful claims about the capabilities of computational fluid dynamics models like FDS being able to accurately predict the suppression effects of sprinklers on vehicle fires.

The "Fire Dynamics" session had some interesting stuff in it too, perhaps the most worrying of which was the presentation by Norm Alvares where he showed how easy it is to ignite vehicle tyres, and how hard they are to extinguish with water sprays.

But for me, the highlight of day 1 was the demonstration smoke test in the nearby Prado-Carénage Tunnel. The test was a demonstration of the capabilities of their ventilation system, which was quite impressive. Despite a naturally windy location, the system is able to control ventilation in the tunnel, so that if there is a fire in the tunnel, the airflow can be reduced to zero at the fire location, while smoke is extracted on either side of that location.

On day 2 of the conference I spent most of the day in the 'Ventilation' session as I was chairing the session in the morning and speaking in the afternoon. I have a particularly biased view of this session as my paper "Rediscovering the Throttling Effect" was awarded 'best paper' at the conference dinner. A video of my presentation is given below.



The other papers in the session were generally interesting and contained a good mix of experimental and modelling studies. It is clear, however, that we are still as obsessed with 'backlayering' as we were over a decade ago. I caught the final few talks in the 'Risk Analysis' session, and these were also interesting, some of them daring to ask questions about ethical issues and the value of human lives.

Photo thanks to Mia Kumm, Mälardalen University

The conference dinner was a good end to day 2 and featured singing by members of the SP team as well as awards for the best poster, the best paper and the ISTSS 'Achievement Award' which was given to Dr Yajue Wu from Sheffield University. An after dinner speech was given by Arnold Dix where he commended, amongst other things, the papers that took seriously the ethical issues of fire and life safety in tunnels. He also urged the delegates to share knowledge, in particular with developing countries - a message which was well received, but only time will tell if its actually applied.

The final day seemed slightly muted compared to the previous two, although there were still some interesting debates following Peter Johnson's claim that suppression systems do not hinder egress in tunnels. In the other session, there were some good presentations on passive fire protection and structural issues, with the 'mobile furnace' presented by CETU and CSTB being an interesting innovation. Following lunch, the day closed with a few presentations of case studies, including the worlds longest undersea tunnel project in Norway.

And then it was over. All in all it was a good conference, in a good location with some interesting presentations. I'm not a great fan of 'networking lunches' and the poster session was not given the prominence it deserved, but aside from those two minor niggles, this was an enjoyable and well organised conference. I look forward to the next one in Canada...

Ricky Carvel

Blog post 2.0 – An Edinburgh Postdoc’s IAFSS Experience

The IAFSS 11^th international symposium was held this February in Christchurch, New Zealand.  The fact that the conference was held in Christchurch, not too long after the devastating earthquakes three years ago, which crippled the city and from which it is still only just starting to recover, is a testament to the Association and the organisers to stick with, and support, Christchurch and the University of Canterbury.  It was clear from Prof Charley Fleischmann’s opening address that the past few years have been tough for everyone in Christchurch and it was a privilege for me to be part of this conference, in this place.

As at most academic conferences, there were a variety of presenting styles for the technical and keynote talks, some of which were good and some that were on a spectrum between slightly confusing, to somewhat hard to follow, to downright incomprehensible.  In general the keynote addresses lucidly conveyed their messages, with clear and concise descriptions of what had been done, why it had been done, and why the varied audience attending the conference should be interested in the research outcomes; and in general, the better presentations contextualised and provided a history up to the point of the novel research being presented (as should be expected for a keynote address).  Particularly good exponents of this were structural engineer John Hare, who spoke on the immediate structural engineering problems that arose in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, and Prof Bart Merci, who eloquently highlighted the need for more information on the appropriate allocation of computing resources used in research and consultancy to ensure appropriate use and development of computer models and programs in fire safety science and engineering applications.

Other highlights of the conference from my point of view were the presentations given by Dr Mike Spearpoint and Prof Jose Torero. Mike’s presentation on the probabilities of finding doors open (10% apparently), and Jose’s talk on the history and future of the compartment fire, respectively, were excellent.  Both presenters were confident and casual, and clearly explained the context, limitations, equations and methods used in their work. The slides were clear, uncluttered, and comprehensible in the short time that the audience had to look at them (unlike in some of the other technical and keynote presentations). And for the most part the peer-reviewed papers, posters (including a cartoon poster!), and images that were presented were of very good quality; providing topics leading to interesting debates. However not all the presentations were up to these standards and, as in previous IAFSS meetings, lack of clarity or an inability to place oneself in the place of the audience member was a serious problem for some presenters. 

As for the organisation of the conference – I was duly impressed with the programming of the various conference components, with complimentary areas of interest being separated into parallel sessions so that one would not have to choose between Paper X or Paper Y, but could happily see both; also the venues and the evening entertainment programme were very well chosen (particularly considering the post-earthquake destruction), allowing discussions and networking to easily take place between all the participants – of which there were about 250 in total with 15 having strong ties to the BRE centre at Edinburgh (see photo below). However there were no participants from Africa or from South America, which is clearly not due to any failing in the organisation of the conference but a reality which raises questions for the Association in general:  Is this a concern? Are there fire science research centres in these continents with sufficient funds to come to international conferences? If yes, why is IAFSS not sufficiently appealing to them? If no, how can IAFSS support and involve researchers, students, and practitioners from these continents in the progress of fire safety science?

The Membership Business Meeting reported that the Association is in very good financial health, membership is on the rise, and the new committee was announced. In light of the financial state of the association, it seemed a shame that two of the three recipients of the Best Thesis Awards did not attend the symposium to receive their award and accolades in person, even though there is apparently money set aside for students to attend. 

The membership meeting also highlighted, for me at least, a certain (and worrying) lack of transparency within the organization.  I found it odd, as a relatively new member, that I could vote for members to be appointed to the executive committee but not for the chairman (more appropriately chairperson), who will lead the executive committee and the Association for the next three years.  I found it odd that that there were no clear indications as to why there are 24 members to the committee or why these need to equally represent the three regions that the Association has (rather arbitrarily it seems) separated the world into.  It is also odd that, having looked at the bylaws of the association, the association could be run by the six officers (Chairman, 3 vice-chairmen, an honorary secretary, and an honorary treasurer) and two members of the committee, without the need for 16 additional committee members. 

However, for all my nit-picking at certain problems and concerns (which are intended to help the IAFSS to improve in the years to come), I thoroughly enjoyed the well organised conference; I learnt a good deal from, and enjoyed many of, the presentations; and I had the opportunity to build research contacts with several people.  I look forward to Lund in 2017!

Edinburgh and associates All rights reserved by IAFSS

Experiences at the Young Researchers Training School for fire engineers (COST TU0904)

It is with great pleasure that we (John Gales, University of Edinburgh and RuiRui Sun, University of Sheffield) report to you on our experiences at the Young Researchers Training School for integrated fire engineering (COST TU0904) which occurred in April 2012 in Malta. This training school had been intended to broaden the research background of the participants and provide them a chance to network outside their normal studies through the exchange of information and opinion. The training school was a valuable five day experience for the careers of the students in fire engineering selected from across Europe. This conference involved two parts: lecture and brainstorming sessions.

Some of the participants at the Young Researchers Conference training school for fire engineering research in Malta, April 2012. Photo is courtesy of Prof Ian Burgess.

The lecture session was led by various practitioners and academics in fire engineering focusing on topics of fire behaviour, integrity design, life and structural safety. Presentations by Prof Jean Marc Franssen and Prof Paulo Vila Real summarized the development of research and design methods of structural fire engineering; structural robustness in fire was summarized by Prof Ian Burgess; Dr Florian Block presented the application of performance-based design in practice from the view of an engineer; Dr Guillermo Rein gave an introduction of fire dynamics to structural engineers emphasizing the importance of research on travelling fires; Dr Luke Bisby reviewed the past, current and future status of structural testing in fire; Dr Yong Wang presented the properties of protection material with special reference to intumescing coatings research; and Jim Marsden shared the fire service’s view on fire engineering. See group photo above. All lecture presentation slides can be viewed here;

http://fire.fsv.cvut.cz/ifer/2012-Training_school/Lectures/Lectures.htm

For us students in attendance these presentations gave a unique opportunity to hear from various academics and those in the industry about their research and consulting experiences. The topics covered a wide range of themes but in particular closely related to our PhDs; such as modelling progressive collapses in structural fires (Ruirui) and experimentation of structural systems in fire (John). Some of the ideas presented had controversy and were thought provoking but all had some use for our projects; one example is the ‘simple’ or ‘not simple’ modelling perspectives, which were elaborated on by Prof. Jean-marc Franseen with respect to further research and endeavours we plan. What we found particularly helpful was that lectures provided a window into professional thought; such as when new research results are presented, what it takes for them to accept or reject. The practitioners and academics provided expertise on what our duties as young researchers are. These presentations widened, inspired and comprehensively pushed our knowledge establishing a more thorough and solid research background for integrated fire engineering.

The brainstorming session followed with nearly 30 student presentations of research projects being conducted throughout Europe (mostly PhD projects but also some MSc(s) were included etc.) covering diverse topics from passive fire resistance, fire development, risk assessment etc. The presentations all allowed for some flexible but yet intense and interesting discussion, where ideas, knowledge and opinion were exchanged by the young researchers, practitioners and academics. The experience for us students was not only to directly give us ideas on where to go next or how to sort out the problem we are confronted with, but also, more valuably, make us think about our problems rationally and to develop a professional thought process on research and problem solving. The abstracts and slides for these presentations can be viewed here;

http://fire.fsv.cvut.cz/ifer/2012-Training_school/Students_Abstracts/index.htm

and

http://fire.fsv.cvut.cz/ifer/2012-Training_school/Student-presentations/index.htm

Rarely do conferences give an opportunity to speak of projects in the level of rigorous detail that we were allowed here, and to the level of depth of helpful discussion generated afterwards. This is one of the merits that this training school  (rather than a normal conference experience) stood out. At times though, it was a challenge to understand others work and suggest solutions or different ideas, but that is mostly due to different presentation styles and branches of study we may not fully be familiar with (typical of multidisciplinary events). Standing as presenters, it was a wonderful and valuable experience to exchange work to our peers and experts, gathering advice and feedback. We both come from known fire-research groups which regularly challenge and communicate with one another in much the same spirit of this training school however, presenting within your own group sometimes it is easy to miss key things that you can or could consider. This training school was all the much more valuable to participate in, as fresh eyes could look at our problems. Students from so many backgrounds (with incredibly diverse expertise) were present ready to share ideas and push each other further. Moreover, it is very exciting to find common-ground with other researchers on their work and seek research collaboration with them. Two imminent examples of this continuing collaboration are the visiting of two students, one from Thessaly and the other from Naples, each to Sheffield and Edinburgh respectively for several weeks to research on structural and fire.

The conference was not only about work though; the attendants participated in a number of visits in Malta after the conference (see photos below). The sites to see, food to taste and overall Maltase atmosphere make us wish more fire research events could be held like this training school. The people (Maltase, organisers, students) were amazing and incredibly helpful.

Some of the many spectacular views of Malta (photos by RuiRui Sun)

We were incredibly thankful to be selected as student representatives of the United Kingdom to attend the training school, we thank those who organised the conference, in particular Ruben Paul Borg of the department of Civil and Structural Engineering, University of Malta (host of the training school), the attendees, and all for the feedback they had provided us. We hope that this training school, or something along the lines of it, will continuously be held to engage and motivate more young researchers in integrated fire engineering

                         John Gales (University of Edinburgh) j.gales@ed.ac.uk

          RuiRui Sun (University of Sheffield) cip07rs@sheffield.ac.uk

SiF 2012 Conference: A Review and Post-Script

SiF 2012 Conference: A Review and Post-Script

This Firegroup Blog post presents the thoughts of a PhD student in Structural Fire Engineering after attending the recent SiF2012 Conference in Zurich, Switzerland. 

The “Structures in Fire” (SiF) movement first held a  workshop in 2000. From the outset there was a clear objective for these workshops:

“The main mission of SiF conferences is to provide an opportunity for researchers and engineers to share their research, technology and expertise with their peers at an international forum.”

“The focus of the conference is on the behaviour of structures under fire exposure, including the ‘art, science and practice of structural fire engineering’…” Conference handout.

In 2008, a more formalised set up was established with a steering committee for the rebranded “SiF Movement”.  The restructuring was due to the ever growing number of attendees and submissions to present at the workshops; for example at the 6th International conference held at Michigan State University in 2010 more than 200 abstracts were received with 123 papers being selected for publication and presentation as posters or as formal oral presentations. The 7^th International Conference on “Structures in Fire” (SiF 2012), held at the beginning of June in the beautiful city of Zurich, in Switzerland, received an even greater number of submissions with only 83 papers being presented in poster or in oral form.  The seminar facilities and general areas at ETH Zurich were fantastic and the set-up for the formal oral presentations and poster presentations was excellent.  Also, the new poster session format breathed life into what is usually a slow and quiet hour or so where most people check e-mails rather than discuss the work in the papers, and the organizers should be commended on this format (two parallel session of five minute presentations back to back with then a general discussion period at the posters over coffee). The lack of functioning wifi access may actually have helped here also!

The high number of submissions compared to the relatively low number of accepted papers should have led to the cream of the crop being selected for either the formal 20 minute presentation or for presentation in one of two parallel poster sessions, but as evident by the open delegate forum which was held during Day 2 of the conference, the review process and thus selection of the papers was rather severely criticised.  

This was not the first time this had occurred. At the SiF 2010 conference (the first that I attended) the review process was discussed in a similar delegates’ open forum. This resulted in the introduction of using two page extended abstracts, rather than single paragraph abstracts, to judge the quality of the work to be presented at the SiF 2012 conference.  The abstracts were also reviewed anonymously by three experts and the accepted abstracts were then asked to produce full papers.  

So why are there still complaints regarding the review process and the quality of presented work?

First, the reviewers in some instances had >10 two-page abstracts to review in less than two weeks, which is not conducive to selecting with high quality control. Second, it easier to convey experimental programs over analytical ones and might be one of the reasons that a large percentage of the presentations given at this year’s conference were predominantly experimental in theme.  In two-page abstracts, experimental methods, results and outcomes can be summarised relatively easily, whereas analytical models and more abstract work need more space to fully explain.  

Other issues with the presented papers, with these views shared by many conference participants, were:

1.       Too many papers lacked novel or significant context:

Many of the presented papers struggled to inform the listener of why they should care about the work being presented; there was little context to the work provided in most cases. Even the most engaging presentations and presenters frustrate delegates by still not clearly saying at any point why the work was done and why we should care about it.

2.       The lost art of presenting:

Too many of the presentations were difficult to follow and were easy to disengage from with which detracted from the discussions, as instead of collective expertise being used to further research and how to apply it in the real world, questions were being asked simply for clarification rather than for extension.  For the presentations that were presented well constructive discussions generally followed.  There were three trends that could be seen when comparing the good and bad discussions.

                                             i.            Language barrier – Many of those who did not have a good grasp of English, the chosen language of the conference, struggled to communicate their work effectively. This problem is admittedly very hard to solve.

                                           ii.            Hard to see the forest through the trees – many of the presenters had graphs or images, on which they would be making a comment, but rarely did they explain what the graph or image was showing or representing.  For those who aren’t experts in the area (which should be a large portion of the audience if the research being presented is at the cutting edge of the science), there would be no way of understanding what they were looking at.

                                          iii.            Mathematical blindness – as was evident with the images, there were too many equations with not enough explanation, and in some case there were too many equations to even keep track of.  The effect of this was to turn the slide in to a blur of black and white with little apparent meaning.

3.       The works presented in the papers, on the most part, were not put through academic rigour:

With the papers being presented on the basis of only a 2-page abstract, the actual work presented in the 10-page papers was not critiqued at all, nor rigorously assessed, but only checked for editorial issues.  This led to the quality of the papers being presented being lower than it really should have been be for the SiF conference series. 

The conference was also missing a key ingredient; industrial contributions.  Most of the delegates and presenters were academics, me included. Without delegates from consultancy and industry, those who apply the information in the real world, we fool ourselves that we are doing a good job because we lose perspective and context to our work and presentations. Our work becomes self-satisfying rather than industry leading, and we end up producing redundant, sometimes pointless knowledge.

So where could we go to improve the SiF Movement which seems to many of us to be stalling?

First, we need to increase the quality of the papers presented, which could be done by full paper submissions being reviewed and papers selected on this rather than on 2-page abstracts. This would also need a change in the amount of time for each paper to be reviewed; no-one would be able to rigorously review 10+ papers in two-weeks, and the number of reviewers looking at submissions.  One idea that I overheard was to say that if you are wanting to submit a paper to the conference then you would be automatically expected to review at least three other papers with the stipulation that if the papers that you are reviewing are not returned in a timely fashion and do not pass a board of reviewers quality control for a rigorous review, then your own paper would be rejected.

Second, the presentations need to be improved, and so maybe these should be reviewed as well, not for content but for length and for style, and a set of guidelines produced to help those presenting to communicate effectively. Guidelines could include, amongst other things, stipulations that if you are presenting graphs and equations that you explain clearly what the audience is looking at, and why they are looking at it.  If the quality of the work is good enough and the presentation of it clear, then issues of language are significantly lessened.

Finally, we need to remain relevant to the construction industry.  One way of doing this is to invite our industrial partners to join us and invite them to speak on the subjects that they feel are of major concern to them.  They could be designers, consultants, materials suppliers, architects, practitioners, and we could discuss what matters to them and to the broader building design industry, rather than existing in an isolated academic bubble with few industrialists present.

All in all, although still young as a conference series, what should be the leading conference for matters pertaining to structures in fire still needs time to grow, develop, and mature so that we can be fully effective and relevant to today’s needs.

David Rush

Performance-based Fire Safety Engineering of Structures

There will be a mini symposium on Performance-based Fire Safety Engineering of Structures as part of the 1st International Conference on Performance Based and Life Cycle Structural Engineering, which will be held in Hong Kong in December 2012.

The mini symposium is being organised in part by members of the Centre. See the symposium web page for further details.

The Science of Suppression FIRESEAT symposium

On November 9th, 2011 the students from the International Masters of Science in Fire Safety Engineering (IMFSE) studying in Edinburgh University were invited to attend the 5th FIRESEAT symposium "The Science of Suppression". During this conference, attended by ~85 people, we saw eight different speakers from varying parts of the world discussing topics focus around fire suppression.

The first speaker we had the privilege of seeing was Ronald Alpert. As the Alpert Correlations were among the topics covered in our Fire Dynamics course, we were all excited to hear him speak. Alpert explained how he designed his correlations and revisited them with new experiments. He eagerly stressed his excitement for someone to advance his correlations past the current level in which they are.

The next speaker was Yibing Xin of FM Global. Sprinkler technology was the topic discussed. FM Global is working on being able to affectively model how sprinkler systems work during suppression. By doing so, they are creating a new modeling tool, FireFOAM. This would be a very useful tool because of the expensive costs of having full-scale burns. We recognize the challenges faced in order to create a program such as this, although there is no doubt that it would be a great use to the Fire Protection Community.

Andre Marshall form the University of Maryland was the third speaker of FireSeat. The research Marshall is conducting also focuses around sprinklers. In contrast to Yibing, his research involves quantitatively breaking down the spray pattern of a sprinkler head and analyzing it. The techniques being used by Marshall are nothing short of impressive.

FireSeat at this point made a turn toward the use of water mist sprinkler systems. Louise Jackman of LPCB discussed some research she was conducting. This involved using mist systems in different setting with different variables. All we could conclude from this was that mist systems are temperamental, in which the system requires just the right variables to effectively work.

The next speaker was Stefan Kratzmeir of IFAB. He discussed his research involving the use of water mist systems in tunnels, hiting mist could be effective in mitigating a fire. Our concern with this topic was the interaction between the mist and the ventilation. We felt this concern was not addressed.

The next research area discussed was the use of cryogenic suppression, presented by MichaelDelichatsios of the University of Ulster. He explained the used of cryogenic material (mainly liquid nitrogen) to extinguish pool fires and wood crib fires. Although the method was effective, the delivering of the agent to the seat of the fire seems to remain the issue in which water and foam systems still have over such a suppression agent.

Suppression in tunnels again arose with the next speaker, Elizabeth Blanchard. Her modelling results of fire suppression inside a medium size tunnel seemed to be more accurate than previous studies. But the question already began to loom among our students concerning the interaction between the mist delivered and ventilation. Our concern was again not addressed, despite the effectiveness of the mist system to mitigate fire and enhance visibility, we felt more research should be performed to address the issue.

The final speaker of the 2011 FireSeat was Stefano Chiti of COWI. This research involved using hypoxic air for fire suppression and prevention. This would basically displace oxygen in the combustion process making combustion slow or near impossible to occur. This is a good research area, especially since Halon is no longer being used. We can see the use of this being great as long as it is ensured not to effect human life.

FireSeat was a great experience. It showed suppression research has many different areas that will improve the suppression actions of the Fire Protection Community in the future.

by Joshua Reichert and Oriol Rios, 2011 IMFSE students

Fire on Earth at the 2011 European Geosciences Union

Dear Researchers interested in Fire and the Earth System,

We very much hope that you will join us at European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2012 in Vienna this April by submitting an abstract to our session "Understanding Fire Phenomena in the Earth System Using Interdisciplinary Approaches". The session aims to bring together all disciplines within fire science toward increasing scientific understanding of the impact of fires on the Earth system. The session will position contributors into four key fire research themes:

• Fire Behaviour
• Fire and the Biosphere
• Fire and Earth’s Past
• Fire and the Earth System

These groupings are designed to enhance interaction between the communities of fire safety science and engineering, wildfire ecology, palaeofire and Earth system science enabling insight to be gained into the influence of fire on our planet. More importantly we hope that the session will enhance interaction between all our communities.

The deadline for your abstract submission is 17th January 2012.

EGU has a number of exciting fire based sessions this year making it a must for all of us interested in fire science.

We hope to see you all at Vienna in April.

Best wishes,

Claire Belcher and Guillermo Rein (session organizers)

Awards to Edinburgh students at the 10th IAFSS

The last Symposium of the International Association for Fire Safety Science (IAFSS), held at the University of Maryland, was attended by 18 members of the group who presented a total of 6 papers, 4 workshop talks, 9 posters, and 5 photos. 

Members of the University of Edinburgh at the 10th IAFSS Symposium 2011.

Congratulations to our two students who recieved awards for their research:

Angus Law recieved the Best PhD Thesis Award in Europe/Africa for his thesis titled The Assessment and Response of Concrete Structures Subject to Fire (2010).

Cristian Maluk recieved the Best Student Poster Award for his work Bond Strength Degradation for CFRP Bars and Steel Prestressing Wires in Concrete at Elevated Temperature Fire Behaviour of Novel Concrete Structural Elements.

FIRESEAT: The science of suppression

Join us in Edinburgh on 9th November this year for a one day symposium on 'The Science of Suppression'. Online registration now open. Click the image above or visit www.fireseat.org for more information.

The Endemic of the Academics

IAFSS Symposium 2011 recap - personal reflections by a postgraduate student.

As a newcomer to the fire science scene (and a new member of IAFSS) I was disappointed and downhearted by the recent 2011 IAFSS symposium in Maryland. It is not to say that there weren’t some good aspects, the location and conference buildings (barring the marginal on-site student accommodation), the catering, and the welcome team were all excellent, but in general I wonder where I fit in to the field of fire safety engineering, and more importantly why I should want to.

The conference started on the Sunday with a student networking event and workshops session. Both of these I missed due to a delayed flight but if these workshops were similar to the one I attended on the following Friday morning they would have been useful and added value to the conference. This cannot be said for the reaction to the student session that I have enquired about. The student session was apparently organised as a networking opportunity for the students. There was no formal structure to the session and students were left to their own devises and allowed to mingle. This lead to the anticipated reaction of the students interacting only with the people they knew, and therefore there was little networking.

In my opinion, while the students clearly play a role in a successful networking event, a better scenario for a student session is not to network solely with other students but rather with the academics and industry professionals who are present at the conference so that enthusiasm for the sector and for scientific research could be instilled. This could have been achieved by having a student workshop where a few of the well-regarded academic/industry individuals could pose a few issues and then workshop it with the students. This would promote interaction and discussion on fire science but would also allow for people to participate as much or as little as they feel able. A session like this would add value to any conference.

The rest of Sunday was good: the welcome team were very welcoming and registration was accomplished with speed and ease. The symposium welcome reception that evening, being the first official event that I attended, was well attended and had a buzz of excitement and anticipation, as there should be at the start of any major conference, and which I easily got swept up in; this buzz, however, was emphatically swept away by the symposium’s opening keynote.

The opening keynote was, in my opinion, disjointed and virtually impossible to follow. To open a Fire Safety Science symposium by showing a six minute video of a tsunami decimating a town seems inappropriate, unless the keynote was on the dangers of tsunamis for fire safety, which it was in part and was also on risk based design. While I agree that it is good and right to honour those academics and researchers who have contributed to the field, I feel that this should not be done to the detriment of the Association or its symposia. Neither topic was covered properly, nor did either pose clear and important questions to lead to a lively and informative debate.

The opening plenary was not the only one to disappoint, but there were, in my opinion, two strong keynotes worthy of mention. The first of these was by Margaret Simonson McNamee, of SP, with her presentation on “Estimating the Impact of Fire on the Environment”. This presentation raised issues not only relevant to fire safety science but also to a major driver for many endeavours in today’s world, the environment. This issue was apparently lost on the symposium caterers, as an appalling amount of waste was produced during the symposium in terms of plastic plates, cutlery and mugs. Future symposia should demand better environmental controls from the conference venue and catering services.

The second interesting plenary was Charles Fleischmann’s keynote “Is Prescription the Future of Performance Based Design?” This lecture, although with an (intentionally?) oxymoronic title, stimulated debate, especially amongst the structural fire engineers, and generated a genuine scientific and philosophical talking point at meal times. This is one highly desirable outcome of a good plenary or keynote lecture.

Disappointing talks were not limited to keynotes. Many of the presentations did not specify the relevance of the work undertaken and had no obvious conclusions; simply summarising what had already been discussed. In several presentations the use of videos detracted from the information being presented (and in one case the presenter was silent for 2 and a half minutes because of a video). It seemed that some research was undertaken just for the sake of doing some research and the value of it was not clearly communicated to the audience.

I feel that there were also problems with the rigour of work presented, and in the research methods used, particularly in the area of evacuation modelling and analysis, which felt marginal in some cases (although I stress here that I am by no means an expert in this area). The poor-quality feel of work presented at the conference is clearly not solely the fault of the authors and presenters, but also of the scientific committee. The fact that about 50% of the papers submitted were accepted, according to the President’s presentation during the “business” meeting, seemed to be driven largely by the finances of the conference rather than the quality of the work. While this is speculation on my part, I feel that a peer reviewed conference should strive, first and foremost, to increase the quality of the work, however in this case the finances of the conference may have nullified this scientific quality control measure. I am all in favour of peer reviewed conferences; this promotes excellence. But the ambition of running three parallel sessions seems to have muddied the waters and diluted quality. I understand that sufficient funds are needed to cover certain costs, but as a charitable organisation the IAFSS must ask if the costs (and profits) of conferences should be rationalized so that financial drivers do not detract from the scientific quality of the symposia.

The above being said, the parallel sessions were run effectively and efficiently, along with the poster sessions, and so congratulations are due to the chairs of the sessions and the organising committee. There was, however, an issue with the final day of the symposium. The first four days all started at 9.00am with a keynote lecture. The last day, on the morning after the conference banquet, had only 9 talks scheduled. Unfortunately, these started at 8.30am, so it was no surprise that at 8.30am in the morning in the session in which I was presenting (which I am admittedly, slightly bitter about) there were two chairs (one of whom was drafted in last minute), the three presenters and only one other audience member. This scheduling was unfair to those who were asked to present or chair these final sessions. Future symposia should take this into account.

After I left the 2011 IAFSS Symposium, I was left wondering whether it had met the objectives of the association, as presented in the rules of the association given to every member:

“The object of the Association is to promote research into the science of preventing and mitigating the adverse effects of fires and the dissemination of the results of such research. In furtherance of this object the association will organise and support symposia and other educational activities in the field of fire safety science, publish the proceedings of such symposia (provided it shall not undertake any permanent trading activities), seek to co-operate with other organisations concerned with the application of fire safety science and do all such other lawful things as may further the objects of the Association”.

The IAFSS does focus on issues of fire safety science on the international scene, but it is the association aspect of this community that I feel is struggling somewhat. The definition of association, according to Dictionary.com is:

1. an organization of people with a common purpose and having a formal structure.

2. the act of associating or state of being associated.

3. friendship; companionship

On the first two aspects of the word, the conference delivered to some extent, and on the third aspect the working friendships and associations were well represented, but are these professional friendships actually helping or hurting the association – is the association too close? It seemed to me that we accepted the presenters’ statements and ideas, rather than being convinced by them, we did not question enough what people were saying or why they were saying it, and we did not discuss or debate enough the further implications of the work presented. Are we scared of losing our status and no longer being pioneers in the field, let alone the wider world? Do we strive to be noticed and liked rather than producing excellence in our work which might ruffle a few feathers? Are our associations with one another too polite and self-edifying? Do we need to rethink what the association is about, or are we happy with the way things stand?

Food for thought....

By David Rush