This proof-of-concept study examines the ability of broadleaved trees to shieldstructures from glowing embers in intense wildfires. Two types of broadleaved trees (arönn, Sorbus aucuparia, and a small group of björkar, Betula pendula) were selected astest targets and their shielding performance was compared with a conifer (a gran, Piceaabies). The simulated embers were a collection of fallen gran cones that were notburning. The cones were launched at the trees using a ball throwing toy for dogs. The rönnsuccessfully prevented 71 % of the cones from passing through its canopy, the björkarprevented 76 % of the cones from passing, and the gran prevented 95 % of the conesfrom passing. The results and observations during the tests indicate that low flyingembers are not prevented from passing through the rönn and björkar because they do nothave low canopies. The success rate depends heavily on whether the cones impact adense area of leaves. The gran has low branches and thick needles and thus can blockmost of the cones, however, it tended to trap the cones underneath, where they couldpotentially smoulder and ignite the tree.

This pre-study aims to determine whether developing measurable sustainability indicators (MSI) to assess the sustainability of projects, ideas, and decisions related to fire safety would be useful for fire safety engineers, researchers, municipalities, authorities, policymakers, first responders and other stakeholders. A review of the literature, online sources, project reports and numerous interactions with representatives of several target groups within the fire safety community were conducted to assess their sustainability needs. The results show that the target groups included in this project had some overlapping and some unique sustainability needs. Fire service product suppliers are content at this time to self-declare their sustainability status. Fire and rescue services would like MSI to help them make tactical and strategic decision while responding to fires. They are also interested in MSI to help them convey their sustainability value to the communities they serve. Fire safety engineers would like MSI to support their suggestions for improvements in construction design. Researchers and educators will contribute to the development of MSI that serve the needs of the other target groups. Authorities could use MSI to evaluate progress toward improved sustainability in their jurisdictions and transfer data to other levels of government.

Aim: To explore gender influence on individual risk perception of multiple hazards and personal attitudes towards disaster preparedness across EU citizens. Method: An online survey was distributed to 2485 participants from Spain, France, Poland, Sweden and Italy. The survey was divided into two parts. The first part examined perceived likelihood (L), perceived personal impact (I) and perceived self-efficacy (E) towards disasters due to extreme weather conditions (flood, landslide and storm), fire, earthquake, hazardous materials accidents, and terrorist attacks. The overall risk rating for each specific hazard was measured through the following equation R = (L × I)/E and the resulting scores were brought into the range between 0 and 1. The second part explored people’s reactions to the Pros and Cons of preparedness to compute the overall attitudes of respondents towards preparation (expressed as a ratio between −1 and 1). Results: Although we found gender variations on concerns expressed as the likelihood of the occurrence, personal consequences and self-efficacy, the overall risks were judged significantly higher by females in all hazards (p < 0.01). We also found that, in general, most respondents (both males and females) were in favour of preparedness. More importantly, despite the gender differences in risk perception, there were no significant differences in the attitudes towards preparedness. We found weak correlations between risks perceived and attitudes towards preparedness (rho < 0.20). The intersectional analysis showed that young and adult females perceived higher risks than their gender counterparts at the same age. There were also gender differences in preparedness, i.e., females in higher age ranges are more motivated for preparedness than men in lower age ranges. We also found that risk perception for all hazards in females was significantly higher than in males at the same education level. We found no significant differences between sub-groups in the pros and cons of getting ready for disasters. However, females at a higher level of education have more positive attitudes towards preparedness. Conclusions: This study suggests that gender along with other intersecting factors (e.g., age and education) still shape differences in risk perception and attitudes towards disasters across the EU population. Overall, the presented results policy actions focus on promoting specific DRR policies and practices (bottom-up participatory and learning processes) through interventions oriented to specific target groups from a gender perspective. © 2022 by the authors.

This work explores the challenges of using life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle cost (LCC) analysis to provide easily accessible decision support for early product development in cases where intellectual property (IP) and privacy issues require special consideration. Innovation research projects with partners representing different links along the value chain are potential examples of such cases. A case study in which spreadsheet-based cradle to compounder's gate LCA and LCC screening tools were created for candidate flame retarded polymer formulations exemplifies the need for better solutions to overcome problems associated with lack of transparency due to IP/privacy concerns. These problems affect data quality, scaling up processes, and uncertainty of the results. The consortium in this case study had a common overall goal, although each of the partners had a unique perspective on the polymer development process and different IP/privacy needs. The measures used to overcome the challenges include aggregation, normalisation, and omission of costs and impacts common to all candidate compounds. The resulting LCA and LCC screening tools represent a compromise between providing the requested information at the level of detail required by the partners and reporting results that are as accurate and useful as possible. The findings are: in cases where absolute secrecy must be maintained, no one can learn which materials and processes provide the optimal results; appointing a trusted third party to handle sensitive inventory data can cause increased uncertainty of the results due to lack of peer review; the results of the work cannot be built upon by subsequent research.

In Sweden the responsibility for environmental damage when emergency responders are called to an incident is increasingly focussing on the responders. The problem is that most incident response personnel do not have the training and expertise to assess the environmental consequences of their suppression operations. The Fire Impact Tool was developed for training responders about how fire effluents and suppression media affect air, surface/groundwater and soil. The tool has three interdependent parts: fire models (for vehicles and enclosures), an environmental risk assessment (ERA) model for local impacts, and a life cycle assessment (LCA) model for global impacts. Users can create two scenarios that are compared with a reference case in which responders arrive at the incident and prevent the fire from spreading beyond the vehicle or enclosure but do not suppress the fire. The Fire Impact Tool is not intended for use during an actual fire incident. This work does not answer every question for every possible fire scenario, but it does provide a framework for deeper, broader, more comprehensive training and pre-planning. This is a necessary step toward a future in which responders are prepared to make informed decisions about firefighting strategies and tactics that include environmental consequences.

The aim of this exploratory study has been to investigate the fire properties and environmental aspects of different upholstery material combinations, mainly for domestic applications. An analysis of the sustainability and circularity of selected textiles, along with lifecycle assessment, is used to qualitatively evaluate materials from an environmental perspective. The cone calorimeter was the primary tool used to screen 20 different material combinations from a fire performance perspective. It was found that textile covers of conventional fibres such as wool, cotton and polyester, can be improved by blending them with fire resistant speciality fibres. A new three-dimensional web structure has been examined as an alternative padding material, showing preliminary promising fire properties with regard to ignition time, heat release rates and smoke production. 

Programmet ”IMI-verktyget” (se länk till höger) är utvecklat för att ge räddningstjänst, studenter och forskare ett verktyg för att öka kunskapen angående konsekvenserna av taktiska val vid respons till en brand, exemplifierad av några fordons- och rumsbränder.

I rapporten till höger (”fulltext”) beskriver hur verktyget fungerar och innehåller också exempel på datorlabbar som skulle kunna genomföras inom en brandingenjörsutbildning eller räddningsledarutbildning.

Loose furnishings, such as upholstered furniture, mattresses and textiles, are very important for the early stages of fires. Such products can be easily ignited, contribute to rapid spread of fire and produce a lot of smoke and heat when they burn. This limits the time and opportunity for evacuation and fire rescue. The regulation of fire properties of interior textiles, armchairs, sofas and mattresses has been discussed nationally and internationally for many years, without resulting in more stringent requirements for such products, at least not on a harmonized level. Fire safety and environmental considerations are important factors that are often set against each other. It is therefore important to promote the development of safe and fireproof furnishings that are environmentally friendly throughout their life cycle, and which satisfy other requirements that are usually imposed on this product group. The main objective of this project has been to contribute to new knowledge about how fire safety associated with loose interior design can be improved through developing products that meet sustainability and circularity requirements. These new products shall have fire performance comparable to flame retarded reference products but will rely on construction techniques and materials containing small amounts or no flame retardants. The new products shall be safe while in use and shall be recyclable at the end of life. Sustainability and environmental impact analyses including life cycle analyses of furnishing materials have been performed, as well as fire tests for screening the fire performance of a selection of material combinations. Combining a requirement for both sustainable yet fire safe furnishing is a complex task to solve. The more complex the material combination, the more difficult to predict both factors in parallel. Slight variations in components can potentially change the overall scoring of their performance. Cotton, wool and polyester has been shown to have equally high sustainability scores, although cotton had relatively high environmental impact. Polyamide was identified as the fabric with the best environmental performer but scoring lower on sustainability. The cushion material has great impact on fire safety because it may contribute with large amounts of heat energy and smoke. Polyurethane is by far the most common cushion material and comes in many variations, some including chemical fire retardants (FR). FR’s have not been included in in the sustainability and environmental impact analyses in this study, instead focus has been on exploring alternative methods of achieving comparable fire performance. In the case of cushion material, latex was identified as performing much higher on both sustainability and environmental impact than polyurethane. Unfortunately, latex was not a part of the fire testing series and was therefore not explored with regard to fire performance. Future studies should explore the interaction of the fire performance properties of different materials identified as high sustainability and environmental impact performers, especially in full scale room fire experiments. Thorough knowledge about how different components (of high sustainability and low environmental impact) contribute to the fire performance and how these are maintained throughout the furniture’s lifetime, would improve the possibility of fire safe furniture to be part of a circular economy.

The aim of this study has been to investigate the fire properties and environmental aspects of different upholstery material combinations. An analysis of the sustainability and circularity of selected textiles, along with lifecycle assessment, is used to qualitatively evaluate materials from an environmental perspective. The cone calorimeter was the primary tool used to screen 20 different material combinations from a fire performance perspective. It was found that textile covers of conventional fibres such as wool, cotton and polyester, can be improved by blending them with fire resistant speciality fibres. A new three-dimensional web structure has been examined, showing preliminary promising fire properties with regard to ignition time, heat release rates and smoke production.