Fire fighting

News and Updates

Flames rising from a burning fence are spreading to a tree above and a shed nearby.

NIST Study Finds Wildfire Hazards in Residential Fences and Mulch Beds

August 11, 2022

When building fences and landscaping their properties, homeowners should keep fire safety on the top of their minds.

Illustration shows two houses from above with distances marked between house, woodpile and shed for fire safety.

NIST Offers First-of-a-Kind Guidance for Holistic Home and Community Wildfire Protection

March 1, 2022

Once they have a foothold, severe wildfires can quickly overwhelm a community, particularly one that is densely packed. To shield houses against such a fierce

Draft California Fire Code Includes NIST Tool to Evaluate Wildfire Hazard

September 13, 2021

Severe wildfire disasters are often the product of numerous factors — vegetation, drought, a lack of firefighting resources, and many others — coalescing

Projects and Programs

Indoor Localization and Tracking

Ongoing

This web page is simply a pointer to another page that covers the extensive research program in indoor localization and tracking at NIST.

Fire Risk Reduction in Communities Program

Ongoing

This program reduces community fire risk by 1) increasing the fire resilience of wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities and 2) enhancing the safety and

High Temperature Performance of Fire Fighter Equipment

Ongoing

The performance of fire fighting equipment and gear is critical for the safety and effectiveness of fire fighters. Current equipment standards and test methods

Fire Risk Reduction in Buildings Program

Ongoing

The research in this program (Fire Risk Reduction in Buildings, FRRiB) will enable reductions in the two single largest components of this U.S. structure fire

Publications

Real-Time Flashover Prediction Model for Multi-Compartment Building Structures Using Attention Based Recurrent Neural Networks

March 17, 2023

Author(s)

Wai Cheong Tam, Eugene Yujun Fu, Jiajia Li, Richard D. Peacock, Paul A. Reneke, Thomas Cleary, Grace Ngai, Hong Va Leong, Michael Xuelin Huang

This paper presents the development of an attention based bi-directional gated recurrent unit model, P-Flashv2, for the prediction of potential occurrence of

Measuring Water Flow Rate for a Fire Hose Using a Wireless Sensor Network for Smart Fire Fighting: An Update Using Various Hose Conditions

January 26, 2023

Author(s)

Christopher U. Brown, Gregory W. Vogl, Wai Cheong Tam

A wireless sensor network was created to measure water-flow rate in a fire hose. An integrated electronic piezoelectric (IEPE) accelerometer was chosen as the

A Spatial Temporal Graph Neural Network Model for Predicting Flashover in Arbitrary Building Floorplans

August 3, 2022

Author(s)

Wai Cheong Tam, Eugene Yujun Fu, Jiajia Li, Xinyan Huang, Jian Chen, Michael Xuelin Huang

Rapid fire progression, such as flashover, has been one of the leading causes for firefighter deaths and injuries in residential building environments. Due to

Real-time Forecast of Compartment Fire and Flashover based on Deep Learning

April 6, 2022

Author(s)

Tianhang Zhang, Zilong Wang, Ho Yin Wong, Wai Cheong Tam, Xinyan Huang, Fu Xiao

Forecasting building fire development and critical fire events in real-time is of great significance for firefighting and rescue operations. This work proposes

Software

FDS and Smokeview

Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) is a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of fire-driven fluid flow. The software solves numerically a form of the Navier

ToGS Turnout Gear Selector

Turnout Gear Selector (ToGS) helps the manufacturers, purchasers and users of fire turnout gear evaluate and select the turnout coat and pants ensemble that