Sustainability and Fire Resilience: Seminar 2 - Fire Safety Perspectives Relative to the Three Pillars of Sustainability

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Description

This webinar is the second in a series of three. In the 1990s, the United Nations couched the topic of sustainability in terms of three main pillars, economic sustainability, ecological sustainability, and social sustainability. One of the three primary areas identified as needing to adopt measures to become more sustainable was buildings. The SFPE recognizes the need for a more sustainable built environment but that such efforts should be accomplished in a way that also facilitates fire resilience and recognizes that different communities may have different starting points and differing needs. This webinar features experts dealing with questions of sustainability and fire safety from different points of view. They will lead with short presentations concerning their perspective on fire safety and sustainability, followed by a panel discussion.

Contributors

Finn Nilson

Dr. Finn Nilson is a full Professor in Risk Management with a specialisation in injury prevention and societal safety at the Risk and Environmental Studies department at Karlstad University, Sweden. He is also a guest professor in the Architecture group at Luleå Technical University, Sweden. His work has focused on understanding socio-demographic differences in risk, the effectiveness of societal safety interventions and creating innovative safety solutions. Much of this work has been within fire safety.
Richard Walls

Prof Richard Walls is the founder and head of the Fire Engineering
Research Unit at Stellenbosch University (FireSUN), Africa's first research
team with a focus on fire engineering and structural fire design. Various fire
related topics are currently being investigated by his team, such as informal
settlement fire behaviour, the design of steel structures in fire, analysis of
structures in fire, forensic fire investigations, 3D printed concrete in fire, and
materials behaviour. Before joining academia he worked as a consulting
structural engineer in industry, designing heavy industrial, petrochemical
and commercial structures.
Birgitte Messerschmidt

Birgitte Messerschmidt is Director, Research, National Fire Protection Association. She is responsible for NFPA’s Research Strategy, Research on fire problems and other safety issues, Data collection efforts to maintain NFPA’s fire incident and fire service databases and the NFPA Research library. She has a M. Sc. In Civil Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark and has spent her entire career working on fire safety issues. Making our built environment more resilient to fire through better understanding of the impact of construction products and methods, as well as testing procedures and policy has been a career long passion. She has been involved in testing and research as well as standardization and advocacy. She has published and presented numerous papers on fire safety issues.
Margaret McNamee

Margaret McNamee is Professor at the division of Fire Safety Engineering at Lund University in Sweden. She has her technical expertise in understanding and characterizing the environmental impact of fires and has worked in the field of fire and combustion research for more than 30 years. The focus of her research in recent years has been on fire safety and sustainability. In 2022, Margaret was co-editor of the Handbook on Fire and the Environment, a Springer publication in the SFPE series.

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Description

Contributors

Finn Nilson

Richard Walls

Birgitte Messerschmidt

Margaret McNamee