080 - Adaptive Fire Testing: A new foundation stone for fire safety (ERC StG Grant) with Ruben van Coile

Today is a great day to celebrate with Prof Ruben van Coile of Ghent University, who is most likely the first representative of Fire Safety Engineering to receive a grant within the European Research Councill Starting Grant scheme.  It is not common to celebrate a grant award this much - usually, we would wait till the work gets done and we see the effects... But not here.  ERC is something else. ERC is a place for the bravest proposals brought by the brightest minds of science. And even that does not guarantee success when you have to pass 9-12 independent reviewers and a multiple-stage recruitment process... But it seems to be worth it. A five-year funding scheme that allows a truly grand design to be pursued.

And this exactly is the case with the framework proposed by prof. van Coile. He is not the first one to recognize we need a new foundation stone for fire safety, but he surely is one of those who give the clearest and most achievable pathway on how to get there.  I highly recommend this episode to all fire safety engineers, not to just learn about the grant Ruben has just obtained, but to view the current state of FSE through the lens of this proposal. As it does, in an excellent way, highlight the shortcomings and failures of modern fire engineering.

Join us in this talk, and if you would like to read more about the grant, here is its official abstract (and near future will bring material for sure!).

Proposal Summary
Adaptive Fire Testing: A new foundation stone for fire safety (AFireTest)

The current fire safety paradigm is based on a set of standardized tests which have been developed as part of a prescriptive design framework, and do not provide in-depth understanding of construction products’ fire performance. The resulting incomplete fire performance characterization hampers the much needed innovation in the built environment. The current fire safety paradigm also places tremendous emphasis on the expertise of controlling bodies (AHJ), making them responsible both for the specification of detailed prescriptive rules, and for the acceptance of performance based designs. This is unsustainable in the face of innovation.

AFireTest strives to induce a paradigm shift in fire safety science and engineering (FSSE). The core of AFireTest is the development of Adaptive Fire Testing whereby optimum fire tests are determined from the infinite number of possible test specifications through the maximum expected net information gain (Value of Information, VoI). This will be developed using modern glazing and load bearing glass as innovative case study, resulting in breakthroughs in fire performance understanding. Secondly, a framework for advanced ‘grey’ surrogate modelling will be developed, combining the pattern identification strengths of machine learning with fundamental FSSE constraints. This will introduce a powerful new tool to FSSE and enable the VoI optimization. A grey modelling approach will also be developed for quasiinstantaneous building specific risk evaluations, allowing a new approach to the AHJ acceptance of fire designs. The future operationalization of the new framework for fire design acceptance will require large follow-up investments. Thus, stakeholder buy-in is crucial. Therefore, AFireTest will develop a methodology for the cost-benefit evaluation of fire safety frameworks. For the first time, fire safety approaches will be evaluated from the perspective of Law and Economics, laying the groundwork for an entirely new field of study.

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