Fire fighting

News and Updates

Red fire extinguisher is attached to pipes and hoses inside a vehicle.

NIST Tool Will Help Military Vehicles Fight Fires Using Less Harmful Chemicals

March 2, 2021

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new, interactive spreadsheet that will help the U.S. military

New Timeline of Deadliest California Wildfire Could Guide Lifesaving Research and Action

February 8, 2021

On a brisk November morning in 2018, a fire sparked in a remote stretch of canyon in Butte County, California, a region nestled against the western slopes of

NIST Conducts Full-Scale Experiments to Demonstrate Flammability Risk of Residential Upholstered Furniture (RUF) and Potential Mitigation Strategies

March 12, 2020

The NIST Flammability Reduction Group (FRG) is conducting a series of full-scale fire experiments in collaboration with the National Fire Research Laboratory

Industry Impacts

Photo of a burnt faceplate from a firefighter's gear

Firefighter Protective Equipment

Firefighters rely on self-contained breathing apparatuses (SCBA) to protect them from dangerous heat and toxic smoke. NIST research helped to improve industry

Projects and Programs

Smart Fire Fighting

In 2011, the fire departments in the United States responded to more than 484,5001 structure fires. These fires resulted in approximately 2,640 civilian

Low Heat Release Upholstered Furniture

To reduce the flammability of residential upholstered furniture (RUF), the fire safety community has developed test methods and mitigation strategies based on

Fire Research Grants and Cooperative Agreements

Fire Research Grants and Cooperative Agreements support extramural work to reduce the total burden of fire on the U.S. economy, which is estimated as greater

Fire Risk Reduction in Communities Program

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

Publications

Predicting Flashover Occurrence using Surrogate Temperature Data

February 9, 2021

Author(s)

Wai Cheong Tam, Eugene Yujun Fu, Richard Peacock, Paul Reneke, Jun Wang, Grace Ngai, Hong Va Leong, Thomas Cleary

Fire fighter fatalities and injuries in the U.S. remain too high and fire fighting too hazardous. Until now, fire fighters rely only on their experience to

On the Use of Machine Learning Models to Forecast Flashover Occurrence in a Compartment

September 15, 2020

Author(s)

Jun Wang, Wai Cheong Tam, Paul A. Reneke, Richard D. Peacock, Thomas G. Cleary, Eugene Yujun Fu, Grace Ngai, Hong va Leong

This paper presents a study to examine the potential use of machine learning algorithms to build a model to forecast the likelihood of flashover occurrence for

Time Series Feature Extraction and Selection Tool for Fire Data

September 15, 2020

Author(s)

Jun Wang, Youwei Jia, Eugene Yujun Fu, Jiajia Li, Wai Cheong Tam

This paper aims to facilitate the use of machine learning to carry out supervised classification/regression tasks for time series data in fire research

Generating Synthetic Sensor Data to Facilitate Machine Learning Paradigm for Prediction of Building Fire Hazard

July 10, 2020

Author(s)

Wai Cheong Tam, Eugene Yujun Fu, Richard D. Peacock, Paul A. Reneke, Jun Wang, Jiajia Li, Thomas G. Cleary

This paper presents a learning-by-synthesis approach to facilitate the utilization of a machine learning paradigm to enhance situational awareness for fire

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