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The current fire protection measures in buildings do not account for all contemporary fire hazard issues, which has made fire safety a growing concern. Therefore, this paper aims to present a critical review of current fire protection measures and their applicability to address current challenges relating to fire hazards in buildings.

To overcome fire hazards in buildings, impact of fire hazards is also reviewed to set the context for fire protection measures. Based on the review, an integrated framework for mitigation of fire hazards is proposed. The proposed framework involves enhancement of fire safety in four key areas: fire protection features in buildings, regulation and enforcement, consumer awareness and technology and resources advancement. Detailed strategies on improving fire safety in buildings in these four key areas are presented, and future research and training needs are identified.

Current fire protection measures lead to an unquantified level of fire safety in buildings, provide minimal strategies to mitigate fire hazard and do not account for contemporary fire hazard issues. Implementing key measures that include reliable fire protection systems, proper regulation and enforcement of building code provisions, enhancement of public awareness and proper use of technology and resources is key to mitigating fire hazard in buildings. Major research and training required to improve fire safety in buildings include developing cost-effective fire suppression systems and rational fire design approaches, characterizing new materials and developing performance-based codes.

The proposed framework encompasses both prevention and management of fire hazard. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified, and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework.

Fire represents a severe hazard in both developing and developed countries and poses significant threat to life, structure, property and environment. The proposed framework has social implications as it addresses some of the current challenges relating to fire hazard in buildings and will enhance overall fire safety.

The novelty of proposed framework lies in encompassing both prevention and management of fire hazard. This is unlike current fire safety improvement strategies, which focus only on improving fire protection features in buildings (i.e. managing impact of fire hazard) using performance-based codes. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework. Special emphasis is given to cost-effectiveness of proposed strategies, and research and training needs for further enhancing building fire safety are identified.

This brief is designed to inform disaster risk reduction and management in Philippine jails and prisons. It draws upon research conducted in nine jails and prisons between July 2015 and January 2016. This research included 44 interviews with stakeholders, including inmates and prisoners, and nine focus groups with inmates and prisoners in different regions of the country. The research indicates that natural hazards are one amongst the many threats that inmates and prisoners face in their everyday life. Natural hazards are significant because inmates and prisoners are particularly vulnerable. Inmates' and prisoners' vulnerability stems from a thread of proximate and root causes that range from insalubrious and overcrowded facilities and limited resourcing from the government, to the neoliberal nature of the Philippine state. However, inmates and prisoners are not helpless “victims” in dealing with natural hazards. They display a wide range of skills, resources and knowledge (i.e. capacities) that are grounded in everyday practices and values reflective of the broader Philippine society. This policy brief finally makes some recommendations for strengthening hazard prevention, fostering vulnerability mitigation, enhancing preparedness, and reinforcing disaster management in Philippine jails and prisons. These recommendations emphasise the contributions of a number of stakeholders, including the active role of inmates and prisoners who are the first line of defence in facing disasters in jails and prisons.

The study, within the Increasing Resilience of Cultural Heritage (ResCult) project, aims to support civil protection to prevent, lessen and mitigate disasters impacts on cultural heritage using a unique standardised-3D geographical information system (GIS), including both heritage and risk and hazard information.

A top-down approach, starting from existing standards (an INSPIRE extension integrated with other parts from the standardised and shared structure), was completed with a bottom-up integration according to current requirements for disaster prevention procedures and risk analyses. The results were validated and tested in case studies (differentiated concerning the hazard and type of protected heritage) and refined during user forums.

Besides the ensuing reusable database structure, the filling with case studies data underlined the tough challenges and allowed proposing a sample of workflows and possible guidelines. The interfaces are provided to use the obtained knowledge base.

The increasing number of natural disasters could severely damage the cultural heritage, causing permanent damage to movable and immovable assets and tangible and intangible heritage. The study provides an original tool properly relating the (spatial) information regarding cultural heritage and the risk factors in a unique archive as a standard-based European tool to cope with these frequent losses, preventing risk.

Damage functions constitute an essential part of the modelling of critical infrastructure (CI) performance under the influence of climate events. This paper aims to compile and discuss publications comprising damage functions for transport assets.

The research included the collection of contemplable literature and the subsequent screening for damage functions and information on them. In conclusion, the derived damage curves and formulae were transferred to a unified design.

Damage functions for the transport sector are scarce in the literature. Although specific damage functions for particular transport assets exist, they mainly consider infrastructure or transport in general. Occasionally, damage curves for the same asset in different publications vary. Major research gaps persist in wildfire damage estimation.

The study scope was restricted to the hazards of fluvial floods and wildfires. Despite all efforts, this study did not cover all existing literature on the topic.

This publication summarises the state of the art of research concerning transport asset damage functions, and hence contributes to the facilitation of prospective research on CI performance, resilience and vulnerability modelling.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the crowd dynamics of the visitors at Al-Masjid al-Nabawi during the most oversaturated period to characterize the most critical conditions and suggest technical solutions to accommodate visitors and provide them safe passage.

In this study, the time of entrance from the Al-Salam Gate to the tomb and from the tomb to the exit from the Al-Baqi’ Gate has been collected in the most oversaturated period. To be precise and to model the worst case, important crowd measures of effectiveness data are collected in the two holiest times considered by Muslims, during the holy month of Ramadan and the month of Dhul-Hijjah and during the busiest hours of the day to consider safety factors while proposing future solutions. The conventional manual head-counting method has been adopted to determine the crowd density and to carry out actual counting of the visitors from the recorded videos and photos captured by the legitimate authority.

The analyses revealed that the crowd dynamics in the month of Ramadan (peak) are statistically different from those for other times (off peak). In general, the crowd dynamics at all times on days other than Ramadan are almost identical.

The results of crowd characterization from this study are expected to help optimize crowd management in the Masjid at the most critical location and time. The data collected in this study could be used for future research to simulate similar crowd scenes or for even different crowd management scenarios in case of emergencies such as fire hazards or evacuation process.

This paper aims to identify key factors for a contextualised Systemic Risk Governance (SRG) framework and subsequently explore how systemic risks can be managed and how local institutional mechanisms can be tweaked to deal with the complex Indonesian risk landscape.

Using a case study from Palu triple-disasters in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, the authors demonstrate how inland earthquakes in 2018 created cascading secondary hazards, namely tsunamis, liquefactions and landslides, caused unprecedented disasters for the communities and the nation. A qualitative analysis was conducted using the data collected through a long-term observation since 2002.

The authors argue that Indonesia has yet to incorporate an SRG approach in its responses to the Palu triple-disasters. Political will is required to adopt more appropriate risk governance modes that promote the systemic risk paradigm. Change needs to occur incrementally through hybrid governance arrangements ranging from formal/informal methods to self- and horizontal and vertical modes of governance deemed more realistic and feasible. The authors recommend that this be done by focusing on productive transition and local transformation.

There is growing awareness and recognition of the importance of systemic and cascading risks in disaster risk studies. However, there are still gaps between research, policy and practice. The current progress of disaster risk governance is not sufficient to achieve the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) unless there is an effective governing system in place at the local level that allow actors and institutions to simultaneously manage the interplays of multi-hazards, multi-temporal, multi-dimensions of vulnerabilities and residual risks. This paper contributes to these knowledge gaps.

This paper aims to explore the preferable manner for visualizing different product regulations to be used in the training of and communication between people working at different levels in the production process. Many organizations struggle to communicate important and compulsory regulations, but the intended users are often reluctant to use them.

The study has an action research approach, and the visualized regulations were the result of a human-centered design process that considered aspects for successful organizational change.

The action research approach proved to be a successful framework to design the transformation of well-constructed illustrations in interactive guides, communicate and convince managers and users of the potential of the concept, develop a number of different well-functioning guides and establish regulations with illustrative elements and interactivity in a long-term perspective of an organization.

Further research is needed to follow-up the usage of visualized regulations to clarify how communication and quality are supported in design and production processes.

The study shows how different product regulations should be visualized and established in an organization, with a potential for further dissemination. It is likely that the approach to design and visualize regulations in this study can function in other branches.

The study finds a preferable manner for visualizing different product regulations to be used in the training of and communication between people working at different levels in the production process.

This purpose of this paper is to quantify the effect of local instability arising from high shear loading on response of steel girders subjected to fire conditions.

A three-dimensional nonlinear finite element model able to evaluate behavior of fire-exposed steel girders is developed. This model, is capable of predicting fire response of steel girders taking into consideration flexural, shear and deflection limit states.

Results obtained from numerical studies show that shear capacity can degrade at a higher pace than flexural capacity under certain loading scenarios, and hence, failure can result from shear effects prior to attaining failure in flexural mode.

The developed model is unique and provides valuable insight (and information) to the fire response of typical hot-rolled steel girder subjected to high shear loading.

This paper explores the quality and flow of facade product information and the capabilities for avoiding the risk of facade fires early in the design process.

A qualitative case study using the process tracing method is conducted in two stages. First, a thematic analysis of reports and literature identified two categories for the problems that caused fast fire spread across the Grenfell Tower facade. This enabled classifying the identified problems into four stages of a facade life cycle: product design and manufacturing, procurement, facade design and construction. Second, the capabilities for avoiding the problems were explored by conducting in-depth interviews with 18 experts in nine countries, analyzing design processes and designers' expertise and examining the usability of three digital interfaces in providing required information for designing fire-safe facades.

The results show fundamental flaws in the quality of facade product information and usability of digital interfaces concerning fire safety. These flaws, fragmented design processes and overreliance on other specialists increase the risk of design defects that cause fast fire spread across facades.

The findings have implications for standardization of building product information, digitalization in industrialized construction and facade design management.

This research adds to the body of knowledge on sustainability in the built environment. It is the first study to highlight the fundamental problem of facade product information, which requires urgent attention in the rapid transition toward digital and industrialized construction.

This study aims to develop an assessment strategy for fire damaged infrastructures based on the implementation of quick diagnostic techniques and consistent interpretation procedures, so to determine the residual safety margin and any need for repair works.

In this perspective, several tailored non-destructive test (NDT) methods have been developed in the past two decades, providing immediate results, with no need for time-consuming laboratory analyses. Moreover, matching their indications with the calculated effects of a tentative fire scenario allows harmonizing distinct pieces of evidence in the coherent physical framework of fire dynamics and heat transfer.

This approach was followed in the investigations on a concrete overpass in Verona (Italy) after a coach violently impacted one supporting pillar and caught fire in 2017. Technical specifications of the vehicle made it possible to bound the acceptable ranges for fire load and maximum rate of heat release, while surveillance video footage indicated the duration of the burning stage. Some established NDT methods (evaluation of discolouration, de-hydroxylation and rebar hardness) were implemented, together with advanced ultrasonic tests based on pulse refraction and pulse-echo tomography.

The results clearly showed the extension of the most damaged area at the intrados of the box girders and validated the maximum heating depth, as predicted by numerical analysis of the heat transient ensuing from the localized fire model.