News and Updates

Displaying 1 - 12 of 12

AI Can ‘Hear’ When a Lithium Battery Is About to Catch Fire

November 14, 2024

NIST researchers have trained AI to detect the telltale sound even in noisy environments.

New Smoke Alarms Are Better at Detecting Fires but Still Beep for Bacon

September 18, 2024

NIST research in a kitchen fire laboratory shows that updated smoke detectors still produce nuisance alarms during cooking.

A fireball rushes out of the opening of a small metal compartment in a concrete room.

A Machine Learning-Based Solution Could Help Firefighters Circumvent Deadly Backdrafts

October 17, 2022

The NIST team got data from hundreds of backdrafts in the lab to use as a basis for a model that can predict them.

AI May Come to the Rescue of Future Firefighters

August 10, 2022

New research suggests that AI could provide first responders with a much-needed heads-up about a dangerous condition called flashover.

The Journey to Commercialize Cutting-Edge Sensor Technology

May 17, 2022

In the early 2000’s, Abhishek Motayed found his way to the NIST campus as a contractor, working in what became the Material Measurement Laboratory (MML). Within...

Developing Standards to Reduce Fire Damage

March 9, 2022

One of NIST’s primary missions is the development and use of standards to be used throughout society for the betterment of the public and improved quality of...

Firefighters spray water into a burning concrete building with a sign saying "NIST Fire Research."

How AI Could Alert Firefighters of Imminent Danger

June 1, 2021

Firefighting is a race against time. Exactly how much time? For firefighters, that part is often unclear. Building fires can turn from bad to deadly in an...

New Fire-Simulating Tool Could Improve In-Flight Fire Safety

March 24, 2021

Some of the most dangerous fires are the ones you don’t see coming. That goes not only for fires in buildings but for those kilometers off the ground, aboard...

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...

Fire detection