Publication Date
10-1-2023
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Fire Safety Journal
Volume
140
DOI
10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.103871
Abstract
Due to socio-economic and climatic changes around the world, large outdoor fires in the built environment have become one of the global issues that threaten billions of people. The devastating effects of them are indicative of weaknesses in existing building codes and standard testing methodologies. This is due in part to our limited understanding of large outdoor fire exposures, including the ones from wildland to communities and within communities. To address this problem, the Ignition Resistance Committee (IRC) of the International Association of the Fire Safety Science working group ‘Large Outdoor Fires and the Built Environment’ was established. This manuscript is the result of one of the IRC's initiatives to review current knowledge on exposures associated with large outdoor fires, identify existing knowledge gaps, and provide recommendations for future research. The article consists of two sections: the wildland fire exposure to the built environment and the settlement fire exposure to structures. Each section presents a comprehensive review of experimental and numerical studies of exposure mechanisms (flame contact and convection, radiation, and firebrands). The review concludes with a discussion on data consistency and existing knowledge gaps to highlight future directions for each of the three fire exposure mechanisms.
Funding Number
YD2320002005
Funding Sponsor
Swedish Institute
Keywords
Built environment, Communities, Exposure mechanisms, Large outdoor fires, Resilience, Structures, Wildfires, WUI
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Department
Meteorology and Climate Science
Recommended Citation
Alexander I. Filkov, Virginie Tihay-Felicelli, Nima Masoudvaziri, David Rush, Andres Valencia, Yu Wang, David L. Blunck, Mario Miguel Valero, Kamila Kempna, Jan Smolka, Jacques De Beer, Zakary Campbell-Lochrie, Felipe Roman Centeno, Muhammad Asim Ibrahim, Calisa Katiuscia Lemmertz, and Wai Cheong Tam. "A review of thermal exposure and fire spread mechanisms in large outdoor fires and the built environment" Fire Safety Journal (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.103871
