The world looks entirely different through a thermal camera lens, especially in a fire scenario. These devices reveal harsh temperature gradients between hot and cold surfaces, adding another dimension to how fire safety professionals understand and navigate dangerous environments.Thermal cameras have transformed firefighting operations with astonishing effectiveness. Studies show that in smoke-filled buildings, thermal cameras have significantly improved the changes to identify victims. This technology dramatically reduces search times and increases survival chances, making it an essential tool for modern fire services around the world.Martin Veit, who recently completed research for the Fire Protection Research Foundation, takes us deep into the science behind these life-saving devices. He explains how thermal cameras detect long-wave infrared radiation (7-14 micrometres) emitted by objects based on their temperature, creating images that reveal what smoke would otherwise conceal. The technology works because many combustion gases are relatively transparent in this part of the spectrum, giving firefighters a crucial advantage in zero-visibility conditions.We explore the fascinating distinction between "measuring" precise temperatures (which requires understanding factors like surface emissivity and a bit of physics) and simply "observing" temperature differences (which can be sufficient for navigation and victim location). This distinction proves crucial when evaluating how thermal cameras should be tested and certified for firefighting applications.The conversation delves into the challenges of current testing methods under NFPA standards, which sometimes yield inconsistent results that don't align with human perception of image quality. Martin's research investigates alternative approaches from the field of image processing that could provide more reliable and relevant evaluations, potentially improving both camera certification and opening doors to AI-assisted applications in firefighting.Read the Martin's report here: https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/research/fire-protection-research-foundation/projects-and-reports/measuring-thermal-image-quality-for-fire-service-applications----The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.
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213 - Setting up your own chatbot with Ruggiero Lovreglio and Amir Rafe
The AI revolution has arrived, but fire safety engineers face a critical dilemma: how to leverage powerful AI tools while protecting confidential project data. Professor Ruggiero Rino Lovreglio from Massey University and Dr. Amir Rafe from Utah State University join us to explore the world of local Large Language Models (LLMs) - AI systems you can run privately on your own computer without sending sensitive information to the cloud. While cloud-based AI like ChatGPT raises serious privacy concerns (as Sam Altman recently admitted, user prompts could be surrendered to courts if requested), local models offer a secure alternative that doesn't compromise confidentiality.We break down things you should know about setting up your own AI assistant: from hardware requirements and model selection to fine-tuning for fire engineering tasks. Our guests explain how even models with "just" a few billion parameters can transform your workflow while keeping your data completely private. They share their groundbreaking work developing specialized fire engineering datasets and testing these tools on real-world evacuation problems.The conversation demystifies technical concepts like parameters, temperature settings, RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), and fine-tuning - making them accessible to engineers without computer science backgrounds. Most importantly, we address why fire engineering remains resilient to AI takeover (with only a 19% risk of automation) while exploring how these tools can enhance rather than replace human expertise.Whether you're AI-curious or AI-skeptical, this episode provides practical insights for integrating these powerful tools into your engineering practice without compromising the confidentiality that defines professional work. Download Ollama today and take your first steps toward a more efficient, AI-augmented engineering workflow that keeps your data where it belongs - on your computer.Further reading: https://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/9780784486191.034Ollama: https://ollama.com/Hugging face: https://huggingface.co/Rino's Youtube with guide videos: https://www.youtube.com/@rinoandcaroline----The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.
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212 - A glossary for evacuation with Enrico Ronchi and Ezel Üsten
When experts from different disciplines attempt to collaborate on complex problems, such as evacuation modelling, we often discover that we're not speaking the same language. Even seemingly simple terms like "density," "velocity," and "distance" carry dramatically different meanings across physics, psychology, engineering, and computer science.In this episode, we present the "Glossary for Research on Human Crowd Dynamics," a remarkable community effort that brought together over 60 researchers to create a shared vocabulary for those studying human movement in crowds. In this episode, I speak with two key contributors to this project: Professor Enrico Ronchi from Lund University, who helped organise the original workshop that spawned the first edition, and Ezel Üsten from Jülich Forschungszentrum, the corresponding author of the newly released second edition.They reveal the fascinating process behind creating consensus among diverse scientific perspectives – from the intensive week-long workshop at the Lorentz Centre where the first edition was born, to the year-long online collaboration that produced the expanded second edition. We explore how the glossary handles controversial terms like "panic" (often misused in media and research alike), unpack the nuances of seemingly straightforward concepts like "fundamental diagrams," and discuss why the absence of citations was a deliberate choice to prevent territorial disputes.What emerges is not just a practical resource for evacuation research but a blueprint for how scientific communities can build collective understanding across disciplinary boundaries. As we face increasingly complex challenges in fire safety engineering, this kind of "community wisdom" becomes invaluable. Whether you're a researcher, practitioner, or simply curious about how experts bridge communication gaps, this conversation offers rich insights into the power of shared language in advancing our understanding of human behaviour during emergencies.And here is the link to the glossary: https://collective-dynamics.eu/index.php/cod/article/view/A189----The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.
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211 - Fire Fundamentals pt. 17 - Detecting fires
In episode 17 of the Fire Fundamentals, we delve into the fire detection technology. Fire detection forms the critical foundation of all active fire protection measures, serving as the prerequisite for any fire safety engineering solution to work effectively. Following key points are discussed:Detection systems must balance sensitivity with reliability to avoid false alarms that disrupt building operationsFalse alarms lead to serious business continuity issues and may eventually cause systems to be disabledTest fires methodology to assess sensor viability is discussedOptical smoke detectors use light scattering principles to detect smoke particles in their detection chamberIonisation detectors utilise a small radioactive source creating an ionised environment in which an electrical current can be present, and gets disrupted by smokeHeat detectors operate based on absolute temperature thresholds or rate-of-rise measurementsCO sensors complement other detection technologies to improve reliability and reduce false alarmsLine detectors (both optical and heat-based) provide coverage for large areas like atria and tunnelsAspirating detection systems offer extremely early warning by continuously sampling air through pipesFuture technologies include camera-based detection with AI processing and thermal imagingStrategies to reduce false alarms include multi-sensor devices, coincidence detection, and verification delaysWithout detection, we're blind, and no automated systems may act—making fire detection critical for whatever application of fire safety engineering we implement.----The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.
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210 - Fire Fundamentals pt. 16 - Turbulence with Randy McDermott
In the 16th part of the Fire Fundamentals series, we invite Randy McDermott from NIST to join us for a deep dive into turbulence and its critical role in fire dynamics modelling. We explore the physics behind turbulent combustion and how it fundamentally shapes fire behaviour, plume dynamics, and simulation accuracy.In this episode we cover:Defining turbulence as the enhancement of mixing and heat transfer through the creation of eddies and instabilitiesUnderstanding length scales in turbulence from the integral scale to the Kolmogorov scalePractical considerations when choosing grid resolutions for different fire engineering applicationsHow turbulence models work in Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and what they representLimitations of the D* criterion for mesh sizing and why higher resolution may be neededDifferences between pre-mixed and diffusion flames in turbulent combustionTime scales in fire and the concept of Damköhler number in determining combustion behaviourEntrainment physics at the base of fire plumes requires centimetre-scale resolutionWhy turbulence modelling ultimately determines the accuracy of fire simulations----The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.
Fire Science Show is connecting fire researchers and practitioners with a society of fire engineers, firefighters, architects, designers and all others, who are genuinely interested in creating a fire-safe future. Through interviews with a diverse group of experts, we present the history of our field as well as the most novel advancements. We hope the Fire Science Show becomes your weekly source of fire science knowledge and entertainment. Produced in partnership with the Diamond Sponsor of the show - OFR Consultants
Ireland