222 - Integrating WUI risk management and fire safety engineering with Pascale Vacca

Transcript

Why Fire Engineers in Wildfires Pascal Vacca’s Framework Overview Scales of WUI Risk and Roles Risk Assessment: Hazard, Exposure, Vulnerability Modeling Fire Approaching Buildings From FARSITE Outputs to FDS Inputs Fuels, Maps, Moisture, and Gaps Weather Scenarios and Worst Case Logic Planning Mitigation: Structure and Landscape Prevention and Execution with Stakeholders Communities, Insurance, and Feasibility Preparedness Culture and Tools Apps, Scoring Risk, and Feedback Reassessment Cycles and Change Response Support and Shelter-in-Place

WEBVTT 00:00:00.080 --> 00:00:02.240 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show. 00:00:02.240 --> 00:00:08.640 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>By now I think you are aware of my stance about where wildfire engineering is going. 00:00:08.640 --> 00:00:21.280 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm pushing this into the podcast as much as I can because I truly believe that engaging fire engineers into solutions of wildfire problems, engaging with communities, is really an important thing. 00:00:21.280 --> 00:00:24.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We're the only ones who can do this kind of work. 00:00:24.239 --> 00:00:58.479 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But I also see a rising opportunity for the industry at large, as I also see this becoming a product, a product of fire engineering that could be served to different stakeholders like communities, regional, municipal administration, etc., which want to invest in their safety assessments and improve the safety of their citizens through uh science engineering based uh decision making processes uh powered by a very difficult and challenging analysis. 00:00:58.479 --> 00:01:14.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Therefore, I I try to build up a lineup of talks in the podcast that uh together kind of carve the way towards practical use of fire safety engineering as a framework in the world of wildfires. 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:28.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And of course, uh I'm just a podcaster, I'm not researching this, there are brilliant people who research this uh worldwide, and I was super happy when I saw a keynote at Ljubljana conference earlier this year by Dr. 00:01:28.239 --> 00:01:34.400 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Pascale Vacca from University Politechnica Catalunia UPC, and Pascal did show exactly this. 00:01:34.400 --> 00:01:40.560 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>She shown a workable framework on how wildfire engineering could be performed. 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:52.640 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>UPC is known for industrial fire safety, so Pascale seems obviously inspired by risk and approaches coming from the industrial sector, from chemical engineering, etc. 00:01:52.640 --> 00:01:56.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it it truly is a workable framework. 00:01:56.239 --> 00:02:15.280 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And in this podcast episode, I ask her some deep deeper questions about how this framework looks like, how it can be applied, what are the challenges, what are the missing links, and uh what actually is the role of fire safety engineers at different stages of executing this. 00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:24.879 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, uh, while fire engineering is a future, it is a part of our profession already and will be an increasingly large part of our profession in the future. 00:02:24.879 --> 00:02:29.280 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think we all need to be aware how this works and how can we do it the best. 00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:32.400 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So let's learn from those who are actually doing it. 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.199 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Let's spin the intro and jump into the episode. 00:02:39.919 --> 00:02:41.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Welcome to the Fireside Show. 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:45.280 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>My name Wojciech Wegrzynski , and I will be your host. 00:03:18.879 --> 00:03:23.360 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Applications for OFR's 2026 graduate program are now open. 00:03:23.360 --> 00:03:30.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you're ready to launch your career with a supportive forward-thinking team, visit OFRconsultants.com to apply. 00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:36.240 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You will join a worldless organization recognized for its supportive culture and global expertise. 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:40.800 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Start your journey with OFR and help shape the future of fire engineering. 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:42.240 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hello everybody. 00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:46.560 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I am joined today by Pascale Vacca from University Politecnica Catalonia. 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:48.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Hey Pascale, good to have you in the podcast. 00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:50.319 <v Pascale Vacca>Hi, thank you so much for inviting me. 00:03:50.639 --> 00:03:51.199 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And thank you. 00:03:51.199 --> 00:03:52.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you for coming to the Fire Science Show. 00:03:52.960 --> 00:03:57.840 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I've really enjoyed your keynote in the recent conference in um Ljubljana. 00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:01.520 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So that was very nice, and immediately I invited you for this. 00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:03.680 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You took the invite, so here we are. 00:04:03.680 --> 00:04:16.319 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So let's try to give a deeper dive into the keynote topic, which was integrating wild fire urban interface, fire risk management into the fire safety engineering practice, challenges and opportunities. 00:04:16.319 --> 00:04:19.360 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm not sure if I want to start with challenges or opportunities. 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:20.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's a tough choice. 00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:27.600 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But maybe maybe the first question to ask is why do you think we need to integrate fire risk management into fire safety engineering practice? 00:04:27.600 --> 00:04:28.959 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Perhaps let's start there. 00:04:29.279 --> 00:04:47.120 <v Pascale Vacca>So, with all the events that we are seeing, you know, every summer and also in winter, as we've seen in LA, I believe that fire safety engineers can greatly contribute in basically reducing risk and reducing the consequences of wildfires when they reach urban communities. 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:53.839 <v Pascale Vacca>So that's I think that's it's a great opportunity for fire safety engineers to contribute to the to the problem. 00:04:54.319 --> 00:05:00.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Do you think I I many times I've said in the podcast that I see this being a real job eventually? 00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:05.600 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like I even had people already emailing me, voice like I am already a wildfire uh engineer. 00:05:05.600 --> 00:05:11.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh but do you think the wild the fire engineers could contribute at all parts of the process? 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:13.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How big the contributions could be? 00:05:14.160 --> 00:05:21.680 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, so when we talk about uh the WUI fire issue, so the Warner Nurban Interface fire issue, we talk about different scales. 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:31.439 <v Pascale Vacca>So we have the landscape scale, that's the biggest scale, and then we can go down to the community scale, and then even smaller to the homeowner level. 00:05:31.439 --> 00:05:42.240 <v Pascale Vacca>So when it comes to the landscape scale, this is where fire safety engineering would say has less of uh input because here it's where forest engineers are the experts. 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:47.519 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, but we can greatly contribute at the community scale and at the parcel scale. 00:05:47.519 --> 00:05:52.000 <v Pascale Vacca>This is where buildings are located, this is where we can look at evacuation. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:06:09.600 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh so this is kind of where uh our expertise would be really useful because we we're experts, of course, in a fire uh inside a building or in an industrial facility, but we can translate this expertise to you know what happens if the fire is coming from the outside and it's reaching the building. 00:06:09.839 --> 00:06:11.120 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I share your opinion here. 00:06:11.120 --> 00:06:27.680 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think this though, I still uh see uh you know with the forest scale, with uh the developments like Winity and you know the tools that the colleagues around the world are building to uh manage like large-scale evacuations and fires, but I think there's still uh perhaps some preparedness work to be done. 00:06:27.680 --> 00:06:31.759 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But I did indeed we can shine in the community scale. 00:06:31.759 --> 00:06:42.800 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Um, you being in UPC, I know UPC always has been a place for industrial fire safety, you know, and it's it's made its name uh in this industrial fire safety is risk management. 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:45.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And uh I also see risk management in your approach. 00:06:45.920 --> 00:06:47.759 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So are those two things connected? 00:06:47.759 --> 00:06:53.120 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Are you like following the ideas of industrial uh risk management in in this space? 00:06:53.439 --> 00:06:54.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, exactly. 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:55.120 <v Pascale Vacca>You're right. 00:06:55.120 --> 00:07:02.319 <v Pascale Vacca>The the group Intertech is uh let's say most known for industrial fire safety, industrial risk. 00:07:02.319 --> 00:07:08.079 <v Pascale Vacca>We also worked, I think now there's about 20 years of experience in wildfires. 00:07:08.079 --> 00:07:16.639 <v Pascale Vacca>Um they started looking at fire retardants because we were in the chemical engineering department, so you know then you there's some penciling there. 00:07:16.639 --> 00:07:19.680 <v Pascale Vacca>And then we move down to actually looking at risk. 00:07:19.680 --> 00:07:26.959 <v Pascale Vacca>So when we talk about the wildfire that's reaching the woo, we also use a risk, let's say risk assessment approach. 00:07:26.959 --> 00:07:32.079 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh we look at what's the hazard, you know, are you located in a hazardous area? 00:07:32.079 --> 00:07:46.959 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh yes or no, what's the exposure, for example, that the community or reparsel is going to have when it comes to the wildfire, and then we look at the vulnerability of the community or of the building if we look at the smaller scale. 00:07:46.959 --> 00:07:54.800 <v Pascale Vacca>So we still have this uh, let's say we still look at risk as a whole, so including all its uh parts. 00:07:55.199 --> 00:08:06.720 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In the paper that you sent me, uh there's a formal way of doing this called the disaster risk management cycle, which covers the phases of risk assessment planning and and all the stages. 00:08:06.720 --> 00:08:19.519 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'll I'll briefly read through the phases and then we'll go in-depth into them because I really enjoyed that the fact that it's a framework, you know, it's it's not just uh a bunch of thoughts that uh it would be better if we did we did something with the problem. 00:08:19.519 --> 00:08:21.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>No, it's it's it's a it's a workable framework. 00:08:21.920 --> 00:08:33.600 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And also um for those who were not in Ljubljana, Pascal has presented a full case study, applying a lot of what is being said in here to a specific uh part in uh uphill Barcelona. 00:08:33.600 --> 00:08:39.919 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So we will not only cover the the theory, but we'll also try to discuss the case study, I hope. 00:08:39.919 --> 00:08:41.120 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We can right. 00:08:41.120 --> 00:08:48.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay, so let me let me just quickly read the the phases of disaster risk management cycle DRM. 00:08:48.159 --> 00:08:54.879 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Assessment, risk management planning, risk prevention, emergency preparedness, emergency response, and recovery. 00:08:54.879 --> 00:08:57.440 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How about we try and tackle them one by one? 00:08:57.440 --> 00:09:04.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, how do you see this integration of we risk management into fire safety engineering practice in the assessment stage? 00:09:04.480 --> 00:09:07.200 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like what is the stage and what engineers could do in it? 00:09:07.440 --> 00:09:08.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, I think so. 00:09:08.240 --> 00:09:13.519 <v Pascale Vacca>Risk assessment, I think this is what we are most comfortable with as fire safety engineers. 00:09:13.519 --> 00:09:24.159 <v Pascale Vacca>We are used to do fire risk assessment when it comes to events, fire events inside buildings, so we can translate this to when a fire is coming from the outside. 00:09:24.159 --> 00:09:29.600 <v Pascale Vacca>So basically, here is where we look at all the all the different components of risk. 00:09:29.600 --> 00:09:34.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, so again, we look at the hazard, we look at the exposure, we look at the vulnerability. 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:41.519 <v Pascale Vacca>And this, the assessment, the typology of the assessment will depend on the scale that you're looking at. 00:09:41.519 --> 00:09:51.840 <v Pascale Vacca>If you're looking at the community, you might want to look at different criteria and for different indicators compared to when you are looking at the parsley level. 00:09:51.840 --> 00:10:08.799 <v Pascale Vacca>So, for the community, for example, uh, when it comes to the exposure, we might look at how the fire can percolate, can spread through the community, reaching the entire community, so not just the what the part that's facing the wineland. 00:10:08.799 --> 00:10:24.159 <v Pascale Vacca>And this has also several components with, for example, uh the topography will help uh spreading the fire, the amount of vegetation or amount of fuels that inside the community uh can help spreading the fire. 00:10:24.159 --> 00:10:30.480 <v Pascale Vacca>So at the community level, we might look at things more in general of the community. 00:10:30.480 --> 00:10:38.320 <v Pascale Vacca>If we we might also, for example, include the construction materials of the most of the homes inside the community. 00:10:38.320 --> 00:10:49.279 <v Pascale Vacca>It's not the same if we have a situation such as in what happened in LA or in Hawaii, where we had most of the houses made out of timber. 00:10:49.279 --> 00:10:53.519 <v Pascale Vacca>So this also helps the fire spreading through the community. 00:10:53.519 --> 00:11:00.159 <v Pascale Vacca>And it's different if we are, for example, here in Mediterranean Europe, where buildings are made out of concrete. 00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:03.039 <v Pascale Vacca>So they're not gonna burn as much. 00:11:03.039 --> 00:11:14.799 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, so we can look at these criteria, and then at the at the smaller scale, so the parcel level, uh, we can really look in detail at what are the vulnerabilities of a building. 00:11:14.799 --> 00:11:38.159 <v Pascale Vacca>There's a lot of work that's been done already to identify which are the most vulnerable elements of a building to a fire that's coming from the outside, and then we can actually assess um what my case study did, what I did in the case study is that I assessed um the vulnerability of the building using a performance-based design approach. 00:11:38.159 --> 00:11:48.320 <v Pascale Vacca>So I set some performance criteria, I had the fire spreading towards the building, and then I had a look at how the building is gonna react to the fire. 00:11:49.360 --> 00:11:53.039 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We can actually touch a little more on that because it was an interesting case of modeling. 00:11:53.039 --> 00:12:07.600 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, from what I remember in the in the keynote, you've run uh FDS simulations for fire spread outside of the building and some fire approaching a building, and then uh you were investigating a facade, like a glazed facade, if I recall. 00:12:07.600 --> 00:12:13.759 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh so maybe maybe give us some more detail about how you've used the fire engineering tool set in in this problem. 00:12:13.759 --> 00:12:18.879 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because like for me, I would simulate the building and see what's happening outside, you know, and you reverse the problem. 00:12:19.120 --> 00:12:28.000 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, so the issue came because the area of uh Barcelona that's uh located at the WUI is quite a problematic area. 00:12:28.000 --> 00:12:50.240 <v Pascale Vacca>So the firefighters came to us uh because they uh wanted to know whether they could use our civic senator, it's called basically a community senator of a neighborhood, if they could use it as a community shelter in case of a wildfire, because they knew that the situation of the homes located in the neighborhood was not really great when it comes to preparedness. 00:12:50.240 --> 00:12:54.159 <v Pascale Vacca>So this was a real problem that we had. 00:12:54.159 --> 00:13:08.159 <v Pascale Vacca>And so we decided to approach the issue first simulating a wildfire approaching the buildings because we wanted to know okay, what's the intensity of the wildfire that's gonna arrive at the building? 00:13:08.159 --> 00:13:19.360 <v Pascale Vacca>We kind of took a worst case uh scenario and we ran a faresight simulation to know what would be the fairline intensity, what would be the rate of spread close to the building. 00:13:19.360 --> 00:13:24.879 <v Pascale Vacca>And then once we have this information, this is our input for our FDS simulation. 00:13:24.879 --> 00:13:29.519 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is we need some wildfire inputs to place in FDS. 00:13:29.519 --> 00:13:41.519 <v Pascale Vacca>We don't have uh in when we do performance-based design for buildings, there are some PBD codes and guidelines that tell us, okay, with this type of uh occupancy, you have such heat release rate per unit area. 00:13:41.519 --> 00:13:43.279 <v Pascale Vacca>And the fire is gonna be this big. 00:13:43.279 --> 00:13:47.200 <v Pascale Vacca>We are not there yet when it comes to away fires. 00:13:47.200 --> 00:13:48.879 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is how we did it. 00:13:48.879 --> 00:13:54.480 <v Pascale Vacca>We needed some fire inputs with the outputs from Farsight to then input in FTS. 00:13:54.480 --> 00:14:05.120 <v Pascale Vacca>And then we simulated a fire approaching with the rate of spread uh that far sight send, with the intensity that faresight send, and we could see it approach the building. 00:14:05.120 --> 00:14:17.440 <v Pascale Vacca>Of course, you you also have to put the meteorological conditions in there, so the wind is really important because it's gonna push the flames towards a certain direction, depending on where the wind is coming from. 00:14:17.440 --> 00:14:24.320 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, and and this building had a very big glass facade just facing the wild end. 00:14:24.320 --> 00:14:30.879 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, so we thought, okay, we know the light blazing facades are vulnerable to fire. 00:14:30.879 --> 00:14:36.799 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, so we wanted to specifically simulate this because it was the most vulnerable element of the building. 00:14:36.799 --> 00:14:50.720 <v Pascale Vacca>And then through the FDS simulation, you know what's the heat flux that's reaching the glass, what's the glass temperature, a surface temperature, and then you set some performance criteria, and then you see whether uh the situation. 00:14:50.720 --> 00:15:00.080 <v Pascale Vacca>What we did was analyze the situation as it was, so see whether the building would resist the passing of a wildfire or no. 00:15:00.080 --> 00:15:04.080 <v Pascale Vacca>And in our case, the result was that that the glazing would break. 00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:11.519 <v Pascale Vacca>So we need to put some protection or we need to identify some mitigation strategies so that uh the glazing will not break. 00:15:11.679 --> 00:15:14.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, but that's for the further phases. 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:15.120 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We'll come back to this. 00:15:15.120 --> 00:15:19.279 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh we need to clarify what's far sight and how does one use that? 00:15:19.519 --> 00:15:20.080 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh yeah. 00:15:20.080 --> 00:15:23.360 <v Pascale Vacca>Okay, far sight is a wildfire spread model. 00:15:23.679 --> 00:15:24.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay. 00:15:24.320 --> 00:15:26.559 <v Pascale Vacca>It's a semi-empirical model. 00:15:26.559 --> 00:15:32.399 <v Pascale Vacca>So it uses rotor mill to identify how the fire is gonna spread. 00:15:32.399 --> 00:15:55.679 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, you set an ignition point, you have to know the topography of the landscape, you set the meteorological conditions, and then with this, and and of course, very important, you need to have a fuel map uh so that we actually know what's burning, what's the vegetation uh that's burning, and then you can get lots of outputs from the simulation. 00:15:55.679 --> 00:16:00.639 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, you can get arrival times, you can get rate of spread, fire line intensity. 00:16:00.879 --> 00:16:05.279 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And the one that you can translate into something usable by FDS is which one? 00:16:05.279 --> 00:16:06.080 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The intensity? 00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:06.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The fire line intensity? 00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:13.360 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, so what you can do is the um that there's also an empirical equation to calculate the flame depth. 00:16:13.360 --> 00:16:17.440 <v Pascale Vacca>This is basically how deep the the flame of the firefront is. 00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:20.639 <v Pascale Vacca>Um the fine line intensity is in kilowatt per meter. 00:16:20.639 --> 00:16:23.519 <v Pascale Vacca>Okay, and then you divide by the flame depth. 00:16:23.519 --> 00:16:26.080 <v Pascale Vacca>This is one of the one of the options. 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:31.360 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's the interesting part, you know, because it's in principle it's only very uh logic and easy. 00:16:31.360 --> 00:16:36.080 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You take one model, oh, it gives you an output, and then you put it into another model, and here you go. 00:16:36.080 --> 00:16:38.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's your normal everyday Far Safety engineering. 00:16:38.159 --> 00:16:46.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But um, there are you know those conversions uh and the way how the models work is it's not one unified set of tools like you have to resort. 00:16:46.960 --> 00:16:56.320 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And we could probably go deeper on Farsight uh with what's Rotoman model, how it has been developed, and how how does wind and fuel go into that, but that would be an entire podcast episode. 00:16:56.320 --> 00:17:02.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I'll probably uh stop with the details of the Farsight in here because I have other questions for the assessment process. 00:17:02.960 --> 00:17:18.559 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Um, it's a risk assessment, so I wonder how the quantification of the probabilities look like, or or are like first of all, do you even care about ignition or you look only on the probability that something spreads in certain conditions? 00:17:18.559 --> 00:17:24.640 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because I have an intuitive feeling that ignition will be very, very difficult to quantify. 00:17:24.960 --> 00:17:26.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, uh of course. 00:17:26.240 --> 00:17:29.680 <v Pascale Vacca>So for us, we assume that ignition will happen. 00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:53.519 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, um, luckily in Catalunya, so we are analyzing the specific cases in Catalonia, uh, the firefighters did a great job in collecting past uh fire perimeters, past ignitions, and they kind of identified for each small area of Catalonia the typology of fire that is most probable based on what happened in the past. 00:17:53.519 --> 00:18:00.880 <v Pascale Vacca>So, for example, for the area that we analyzed, they identified two different types of fire that would happen most probably. 00:18:00.880 --> 00:18:07.279 <v Pascale Vacca>One was is pushed by the wind and the topography, and the other one would be a prune-dominated fire. 00:18:07.279 --> 00:18:07.839 <v Pascale Vacca>Okay. 00:18:07.839 --> 00:18:12.160 <v Pascale Vacca>I mean, we are very lucky that this work was previously done. 00:18:12.160 --> 00:18:14.960 <v Pascale Vacca>So we can use it as a base for certain areas. 00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:18.559 <v Pascale Vacca>In other areas, it might be more difficult to have this information. 00:18:18.559 --> 00:18:26.319 <v Pascale Vacca>So then you might go more on a deterministic base of like, okay, what's my main wind direction? 00:18:26.319 --> 00:18:34.400 <v Pascale Vacca>So, based on that, what's gonna happen if I have an ignition in the worst case uh location based on the wind? 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:37.920 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, it's not easy if you if you have limited information. 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:46.960 <v Pascale Vacca>You can look at past fires, but uh I'm I don't know if each country is recording this, if it's publicly available or not. 00:18:47.279 --> 00:18:51.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It may also be a case of a small sample size, like think think Nordic countries. 00:18:51.599 --> 00:18:59.759 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I don't think they can base the future on uh the past fires, like I had Nieves in my podcast, and that was that was the biggest issue for them. 00:18:59.759 --> 00:19:02.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh how about the fuel? 00:19:02.000 --> 00:19:09.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because one, I assume you need to understand what biologically is there, like is it trees, bushes, what kinds of them? 00:19:09.599 --> 00:19:13.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But also I think it's important for you what state they are. 00:19:13.119 --> 00:19:14.799 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like, are they dried? 00:19:14.799 --> 00:19:15.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Are they alive? 00:19:15.920 --> 00:19:22.079 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like in Poland, they would go through seasons, so that probably also is this something you account for? 00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:35.359 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh yeah, so when you look at the information that's available, so you have the the fuel map, and of course, this has different resolution depending on where your information is coming from. 00:19:35.359 --> 00:19:38.559 <v Pascale Vacca>So this also impacts your results. 00:19:38.559 --> 00:19:46.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Of course, it's it's better to have a finer resolution because then you can really go at a smaller scale, specifically when it comes to our work. 00:19:46.240 --> 00:19:57.039 <v Pascale Vacca>Maybe at the landscape scale, it's not as important, but when you look at the community level, it's really important to have at the smaller scale as like up to a single tree scale, like no, no. 00:19:57.039 --> 00:20:02.720 <v Pascale Vacca>For example, I would say we uh in Catalonia we have 20 meters by 20 meter. 00:20:02.720 --> 00:20:09.680 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, I think that's uh that looks like fine enough because then you can really distinguish what's the urban area. 00:20:09.680 --> 00:20:13.759 <v Pascale Vacca>So what's in the according to the fuel map is not gonna burn. 00:20:13.759 --> 00:20:16.640 <v Pascale Vacca>Then we can talk about this because this will also burn. 00:20:16.640 --> 00:20:28.160 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh what is urban area, and then you can really distinguish what is agricultural uh fields, uh, what is the wildland, and then you have, of course, the distinction you have shrubs, you have forest. 00:20:28.160 --> 00:20:34.960 <v Pascale Vacca>And you also have information on the bulk density of each technology and on the moisture content as well. 00:20:34.960 --> 00:20:40.720 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is where where we uh look at the conditions of the vegetation. 00:20:40.720 --> 00:20:50.079 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh we can have you know very low moisture for the dead fuels, and then uh we can have live trees as well. 00:20:50.079 --> 00:20:56.400 <v Pascale Vacca>One of the issues of these fuel maps, however, is that they are not up to date. 00:20:56.400 --> 00:21:10.480 <v Pascale Vacca>So sometimes the fuel map is telling you, for such as in the case study that we did, the fuel map is telling you that you have shrubland, and when you actually go there and look at the vegetation, you see pine trees as well. 00:21:10.480 --> 00:21:21.440 <v Pascale Vacca>So the the that is not updated, and also on the other side, the fuel that is selected, for example, in Farside is the one that's gonna be carrying the fire. 00:21:21.440 --> 00:21:26.880 <v Pascale Vacca>So if you have different typologies, you actually are using the one that's gonna be carrying the fire. 00:21:26.880 --> 00:21:33.279 <v Pascale Vacca>So in our example, it was shrubland because it's the shrubs that are gonna be carrying the fire mostly. 00:21:33.680 --> 00:21:45.200 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>As we're talking about the opportunities for fire safety engineers, I would like maybe I'm naive, but perhaps like a fire engineer could also do the survey themselves, like take a drone, fly around the area and just map it. 00:21:45.200 --> 00:21:49.279 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In if 20 by 20 is your grid that that's sufficient for you. 00:21:49.279 --> 00:21:55.519 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think that's that's quite a manage, like at a community center scale, like you were presenting in in uh UPC. 00:21:55.519 --> 00:22:01.359 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I mean, that that's a scale of a part of the terrain and the building which you're comfortably modeling with FDS. 00:22:01.359 --> 00:22:08.240 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So uh for any fire safety engineer uh listening, like it's it's it's not really huge, it's like few hundred by few hundred meters that's manageable. 00:22:08.240 --> 00:22:14.319 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Could imagine like just going there with a drone and uh and you know mapping it for yourself. 00:22:14.640 --> 00:22:19.440 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, actually we did this in a in a project uh several years ago. 00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:39.759 <v Pascale Vacca>So we had a drone to and basically we had like a 3D with the through the drone, we had a 3D uh image of the area that we wanted to analyze, and then we specifically know okay, the vegetation is located here, uh, and then we could translate this to basically FDS obstacles, you know. 00:22:39.759 --> 00:22:53.359 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh this was done, it was like I'm not expert at that voxelization of uh, and then this was really easily imported into pyrocene, and then we had obstacles for FDS. 00:22:53.359 --> 00:23:05.920 <v Pascale Vacca>Of course, this is a big difference because when you are looking at uh fire spreading through the vegetation, like you don't really care about, let's say, the 3D shape of the vegetation. 00:23:05.920 --> 00:23:16.079 <v Pascale Vacca>You know, the forest is gonna spread mainly on at the surface, so and then it's of course it's gonna catch, you know, if you have a shrub that's close to the surface, it's gonna catch this. 00:23:16.079 --> 00:23:24.319 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, but at the moment we are simulating in FDS, we are simulating the vegetation just as a vent, uh like a burner, like typical. 00:23:24.319 --> 00:23:25.200 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, exactly. 00:23:25.200 --> 00:23:27.039 <v Pascale Vacca>As a burner, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:23:27.039 --> 00:23:28.960 <v Pascale Vacca>On the 3D on the drone. 00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:35.519 <v Pascale Vacca>This was uh uh we use this to uh then create virtual reality experiences. 00:23:35.519 --> 00:23:56.640 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh so this is something that when it comes to the prevention and preparedness side is really interesting because then you can place the people inside their neighborhood or inside on their parcel, and you can have a fire starting, and they can see actually how the fire will spread towards the community or towards their home. 00:23:56.640 --> 00:24:00.319 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is something that we did with uh David Caballero. 00:24:00.319 --> 00:24:04.240 <v Pascale Vacca>He's uh an expert on way fires in Spain. 00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:09.599 <v Pascale Vacca>So yeah, this is also something really interesting where engineers can contribute for sure. 00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:10.160 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Wow. 00:24:10.160 --> 00:24:31.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Well, uh it's it's great to discover that that like those uh ideas and concepts are turning into like uh research and then into tools because it means that this will propagate, and in some years this this will really be uh something that a single engineer, like single fire engineer, like you're delivering a fire strategy to a building today, like you could actually do that study. 00:24:31.599 --> 00:24:37.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I I wouldn't mind flying to um to Spain and fly a drone and do some modeling in field. 00:24:37.599 --> 00:24:41.519 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh that that doesn't sound like a bad job to me. 00:24:41.519 --> 00:24:44.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you if it is if it could uh support living. 00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:53.680 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Um one more um so so in in this uh set of boundary conditions, I also have weather on my list. 00:24:53.680 --> 00:24:56.799 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So so how weather is quantified? 00:24:56.799 --> 00:25:04.400 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like one, do you care about like do you care about the range of probable wins or you just care about the worst ones? 00:25:04.400 --> 00:25:08.559 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And how do you quantify which one is the worst, actually? 00:25:08.880 --> 00:25:21.359 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, um, well, this depends on on what the focus of your analysis is because one thing is okay, I want to know whether a building can survive a worst case fire scenario. 00:25:21.359 --> 00:25:31.759 <v Pascale Vacca>Then you go for the highest wind gusts in uh that happened in uh in a certain day, highest temperatures, lowest moisture, moisture content. 00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:36.079 <v Pascale Vacca>So it really depends on what uh what the objective of the study is. 00:25:36.079 --> 00:25:40.000 <v Pascale Vacca>If you want to analyze a worst case scenario, then go for the extreme, you know. 00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:56.319 <v Pascale Vacca>If if you want to analyze okay, what's gonna happen in my average wildfire day, then you what we did is we looked at a meteor situation in a past wildfire that was uh I think I believe it was one in 2015. 00:25:56.319 --> 00:26:10.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh um this was uh a couple of days for Catalunya where it was they had several uh fires, and so we thought this would be a representative day for for uh you know a wildfire event. 00:26:10.240 --> 00:26:20.000 <v Pascale Vacca>So um yeah, depending on on the objective, depending on what you want to look at, then you you choose uh different meteorological scenarios. 00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:31.599 <v Pascale Vacca>And also again, you might want to look at the probability of this fire, you know, it might be a worst case fire scenario, but actually it's an unlikely wind direction for the area. 00:26:31.599 --> 00:26:44.720 <v Pascale Vacca>So you also need to look at that what's the most likely wind direction, uh, what's gonna happen on a day where I have, you know, my typical uh meteorological conditions for the area, or look at the worst case. 00:26:44.960 --> 00:26:51.519 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, like you said before, you you were supported by your firefighters who already identified the plausible scenarios for you. 00:26:51.519 --> 00:26:55.680 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I guess those were also connected with the wind direction to some extent. 00:26:55.680 --> 00:27:04.559 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So it and and you had data from previous fires that occurred, which probably followed those uh those typologies of fires uh identified by firefighters. 00:27:04.559 --> 00:27:07.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So that's a a great side of references to start with. 00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:14.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I can also imagine someone being in a completely blind like this is a village in the middle of uh of a of a country. 00:27:14.480 --> 00:27:19.279 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Please tell me like what are the what's the the fire risk management I should do. 00:27:19.279 --> 00:27:29.359 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And in that case, I guess you probably would lean towards like a complete parametric study of of different winds and different ignition locations in different fuels and different weathers. 00:27:29.359 --> 00:27:31.359 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But I think FarSight supports that, right? 00:27:31.359 --> 00:27:33.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You can do uh probabilistic in Farsight. 00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:34.640 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, yeah. 00:27:34.640 --> 00:27:40.960 <v Pascale Vacca>And also Farsight, the the let's say the good thing about Farsight is that simulation run really fast. 00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:41.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay. 00:27:41.839 --> 00:27:47.039 <v Pascale Vacca>So in in a time of I don't know, minutes, you have your results already. 00:27:47.039 --> 00:28:03.680 <v Pascale Vacca>So it's not like FDS where you you know a model that then such as one that we run took I think it took close to two weeks to so because once you put a wind in FDS, it slows down everything, you know, because the competition is a very important thing. 00:28:03.839 --> 00:28:06.240 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And you also need uh and you need a large domain, yeah. 00:28:06.640 --> 00:28:07.759 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, exactly. 00:28:07.759 --> 00:28:20.079 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, so the good thing about fire site is you can run lots of simulations uh very quickly, so then you can have an idea of uh, you know, how's the fire gonna spread if I put my ignition point over here? 00:28:20.079 --> 00:28:23.279 <v Pascale Vacca>What about my if my ignition point is somewhere else? 00:28:23.279 --> 00:28:25.440 <v Pascale Vacca>So yeah, this is why it's great. 00:28:25.440 --> 00:28:37.599 <v Pascale Vacca>Of course, it has its limitations, but also I always say like we you know, you know, we have to work with what we have at the moment because if we say uh okay, I mean, uh it's not realistic, we cannot use it. 00:28:37.599 --> 00:28:40.960 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh engineers still need tools to work with. 00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:43.839 <v Pascale Vacca>So at the moment, this is what we have. 00:28:43.839 --> 00:28:49.839 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh it's a better than nothing, and so we we should use it, we should take advantage of it. 00:28:50.160 --> 00:28:53.440 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, okay, let's go back to the disaster risk management cycle. 00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:56.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, assessment you said is the closest to fire safety engineers. 00:28:56.480 --> 00:29:09.039 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So, as uh as we're fire safety engineers, uh we spend a good chunk of time uh talking about it, but there are uh more phases: risk management planning, risk prevention, emergency prep, uh emergency response and recovery. 00:29:09.039 --> 00:29:11.440 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So let's try risk management planning. 00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:18.240 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So you've done your fire safety engineering assessment, are you still needed in the project as fire safety engineer? 00:29:18.640 --> 00:29:30.079 <v Pascale Vacca>You are, you are, because this is the phase when you've done your risk assessment, you know what the outcomes are, and then uh this is the in the management phase, this is where you propose solutions. 00:29:30.079 --> 00:29:49.680 <v Pascale Vacca>So you can propose solutions, for example, when it comes to hardening structures, when you look at the parcel level and you look at a structure specifically, you can pinpoint what are you know you've pinpointed before what are the vulnerabilities of the building, and you can try mitigating these vulnerabilities. 00:29:49.680 --> 00:29:59.759 <v Pascale Vacca>Of course, it's different providing solutions in the sense, especially when we talk about the homeowner, in the sense of like you have to change your entire roof structure because it's uh you. 00:29:59.759 --> 00:30:00.799 <v Pascale Vacca>Horrible. 00:30:00.799 --> 00:30:03.759 <v Pascale Vacca>This is something that might not be feasible for the homeowner. 00:30:03.759 --> 00:30:12.319 <v Pascale Vacca>So then you also have to think what are actions that are feasible for the homeowner to implement to reduce vulnerability. 00:30:12.319 --> 00:30:25.119 <v Pascale Vacca>And then if it comes at the for the community level, mitigation strategies could be implementing a fuel break or increasing the size of a fuel break or create fire breaks. 00:30:25.119 --> 00:30:30.960 <v Pascale Vacca>So when I talk about fire breaks, this means this is an area where there is zero vegetation. 00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:37.759 <v Pascale Vacca>Okay, so you create uh basically an empty space so that the fire cannot spread through that space. 00:30:37.759 --> 00:30:58.160 <v Pascale Vacca>And when we talk about a fuel break, it's an area where there is vegetation, but the vegetation has been reduced so that the fire basically the idea is that the fire would lose intensity through the fuel break, so that when it reaches the community, the fire has already a much lower intensity so that firefighters can act. 00:30:58.160 --> 00:31:00.319 <v Pascale Vacca>So this could be some strategies. 00:31:00.319 --> 00:31:11.440 <v Pascale Vacca>And here, when when it comes about the fuel treatment, of course, here is where we would need help from other professionals because um we have not experts for sure in fuel treatments. 00:31:11.440 --> 00:31:17.599 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh so this is where um the interdisciplinarity of the problem shows up. 00:31:17.599 --> 00:31:19.920 <v Pascale Vacca>And uh so we need to work on this. 00:31:19.920 --> 00:31:29.119 <v Pascale Vacca>And when we talk about vulnerability, uh especially at community level, we might also want to analyze social vulnerability of the community. 00:31:29.119 --> 00:31:33.599 <v Pascale Vacca>So then we will need help of social scientists as well. 00:31:33.599 --> 00:31:46.160 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, so this is the phase where we are proposing solutions where we also have to think outs a bit outside the box and also involve other professionals, other experts in uh in several fields. 00:31:46.480 --> 00:31:52.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So in in your case study, you've identified there is a potential issue with the fire coming to that community center. 00:31:52.960 --> 00:31:54.400 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That was your assessment phase. 00:31:54.400 --> 00:31:57.759 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How did you respond to that in the management phase of the cycle? 00:31:58.079 --> 00:32:06.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Um so we saw that the glazing system in a worst case scenario would not be able to resist to the fire, tracking would happen. 00:32:06.240 --> 00:32:13.920 <v Pascale Vacca>Um so one of the things that can be easily implemented is to place shutters in front of the system. 00:32:13.920 --> 00:32:22.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, this is a solution that we've seen very often, and it's kind of a simple solution, and it's very effective. 00:32:22.240 --> 00:32:24.559 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, the glazing is well protected. 00:32:24.559 --> 00:32:27.119 <v Pascale Vacca>Of course, it depends on the material of the shutters. 00:32:27.119 --> 00:32:36.640 <v Pascale Vacca>You don't want to place uh PVC or plastic materials because that's gonna melt and then it's gonna also gonna burn and contribute to the fire. 00:32:37.039 --> 00:32:42.880 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's why you need a fire safety engineer there, not uh not someone who has no idea what they're doing. 00:32:43.279 --> 00:32:44.319 <v Pascale Vacca>Exactly, exactly. 00:32:44.319 --> 00:32:47.839 <v Pascale Vacca>You need to know also the what material you have to put. 00:32:47.839 --> 00:32:54.880 <v Pascale Vacca>So, for example, aluminium we've seen is a great material, of course, fire-rated shutters, and you have the top. 00:32:54.880 --> 00:33:03.200 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, so these are kind of simple actions that you can do to harden the structure and to reduce vulnerability in that sense. 00:33:03.200 --> 00:33:15.599 <v Pascale Vacca>Then on the other side, if we look at the the fuels surrounding the buildings, this is also where we can have a look at, you know, okay, what can we do so that the fire actually doesn't reach the building? 00:33:15.599 --> 00:33:25.759 <v Pascale Vacca>In the case study, there was a fire break of seven meters, so there was no vegetation for seven meters in front of the facade, and we saw that this was not enough. 00:33:25.759 --> 00:33:36.640 <v Pascale Vacca>So we might want to also suggest to increase this fire rig so that the vegetation the wine vegetation is located further from the building. 00:33:36.640 --> 00:33:48.559 <v Pascale Vacca>Or we might want to suggest a fuel treatment so that they actually have a fire break first and then a fuel brick so that we would reduce the intensity of the fire breaching the building. 00:33:48.559 --> 00:33:51.039 <v Pascale Vacca>So there are similar options there. 00:33:51.039 --> 00:33:56.240 <v Pascale Vacca>Some things are you know, placing shutters, okay, that's you know an easy solution. 00:33:56.240 --> 00:34:07.200 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh when it comes to the fuel treatment, then we will need more analysis for sure to see up to what distance do I need the fuel treatment, uh, up to what distance do I need the fire break? 00:34:07.200 --> 00:34:10.639 <v Pascale Vacca>And here again, it's the interdisciplinarity of the issue. 00:34:10.639 --> 00:34:16.639 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, it's not just the fire engineer that can provide a solution when it comes to the fuel treatment. 00:34:17.119 --> 00:34:19.519 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay, so that's what that was risk management planning. 00:34:19.519 --> 00:34:27.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You're needed to to to plan uh the the solutions, and now from planning we move to risk prevention, I guess. 00:34:27.119 --> 00:34:28.800 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>This is when you execute the plan. 00:34:29.280 --> 00:34:29.840 <v Pascale Vacca>Exactly. 00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:30.719 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, yeah. 00:34:30.800 --> 00:34:32.880 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is where the execution happens. 00:34:32.880 --> 00:34:37.440 <v Pascale Vacca>So uh, I mean, here we can the fighter engineer, of course, can still follow. 00:34:37.440 --> 00:34:49.360 <v Pascale Vacca>You know, it's kind of like when you when you are you've designed the uh a smoking heat control system of the building, you you give the project, you give your design, and then you see it actually implemented on site. 00:34:49.679 --> 00:34:53.039 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Well, it is it sounds like a side inspection part of the building project. 00:34:53.039 --> 00:35:08.559 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But I but I assume it's also like I think this is the part where you would try to communicate the plan to other stakeholders because I assume you work with a specific group of people who are, I don't know, the safety officer of a community. 00:35:08.559 --> 00:35:15.679 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh that's the person you probably work at up to this point because they're paying for your work and they're paying you to to do the plan. 00:35:15.679 --> 00:35:30.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And now the plan turns into an actionable item, and suddenly a lot of other people are involved in the in the project right now because there's people who have to execute, people who have to uh you know discuss it with with the with the community, people who have to plan logistics, etc. 00:35:30.480 --> 00:35:40.800 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I assume uh the role is actually a lot in discussing with those stakeholders on how their actions might impact the execution and and getting the plan right. 00:35:41.199 --> 00:35:45.519 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, ideally, you want your stakeholders to be involved from day one. 00:35:45.519 --> 00:35:47.440 <v Pascale Vacca>Okay, so when it comes to risk. 00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:49.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>We're not in the ideal world. 00:35:49.599 --> 00:35:50.480 <v Pascale Vacca>Ideally, yeah. 00:35:50.480 --> 00:36:06.159 <v Pascale Vacca>But for example, the for us, the firefighters, this is something that they are really useful when it comes to the risk assessment phase because they can actually they've been on the field, they know, so they can give great inputs on your inputs of your risk assessment. 00:36:06.159 --> 00:36:12.000 <v Pascale Vacca>So ideally, you I would say firefighters are key stakeholder in this case. 00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:28.000 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, so you would want them on board uh from day one to check whether they think that you're what you're doing is is actually you know what what they see as risk, what they see as a hazard, what they see as the vulnerability in the area. 00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:33.599 <v Pascale Vacca>Um because they might have also other scenarios in mind that you did not think about, you know. 00:36:33.599 --> 00:36:36.559 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is something that's uh important. 00:36:36.559 --> 00:36:49.360 <v Pascale Vacca>And then yes, when it comes to the execution of the actions uh that you, the mitigation actions that you've identified, uh then yes, then it depends again on the type on the building. 00:36:49.360 --> 00:36:56.639 <v Pascale Vacca>So if you if it's a private home, then of course it's the homeowner who, you know, it has to be feasible for them. 00:36:56.639 --> 00:37:04.239 <v Pascale Vacca>If it's a community center, as our case study, then it's the municipality uh that's involved in there. 00:37:04.239 --> 00:37:08.800 <v Pascale Vacca>So you need to talk with the municipalities to see what is feasible for them to do. 00:37:08.800 --> 00:37:14.719 <v Pascale Vacca>Because, for example, they can provide the fuel treatments around the building. 00:37:14.719 --> 00:37:26.000 <v Pascale Vacca>And since the building is is a public building, they might also have to look for the funding to place the shutters in front of the lating system. 00:37:26.000 --> 00:37:28.800 <v Pascale Vacca>So, yeah, it depends on what you're looking at. 00:37:28.800 --> 00:37:38.159 <v Pascale Vacca>Usually I would say this type of assessments, they're not done for the private person, they're done more for uh public buildings or public entities. 00:37:38.159 --> 00:37:43.440 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is when there you have to see what is feasible for them to execute. 00:37:43.920 --> 00:38:05.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I can only speculate, but I think you know, from the business perspective as in to whom an engineer would be giving those services, I think the community is a good stakeholder to work with because uh the costs are then like within the budgets of communities, like they can handle quite large costs for those assessments. 00:38:05.119 --> 00:38:23.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If they decide they want to invest in safety, and and uh speaking from Polish experience and seeing like the amounts of funds that are going to uh warp partners and shelters and and stuff like that, not to wildfires, but uh to our uh little uh annoying neighbors. 00:38:23.599 --> 00:38:30.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's a lot of money going through the design world right now. 00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:32.880 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>A lot, like unbelievable amount of money from our perspective. 00:38:32.880 --> 00:38:36.079 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I can see why community would be a good partner. 00:38:36.079 --> 00:38:42.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If you think about the single homeowner, I think it would be perhaps more connected with insurance, maybe. 00:38:42.480 --> 00:38:43.679 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I could see that. 00:38:43.679 --> 00:38:54.079 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like I'm not sure to what extent it's true, but I I've heard that uh in California it's very difficult to insure your property because of the wildfire risk. 00:38:54.079 --> 00:39:08.880 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So if that is the case, I can imagine some sort of framework emerging where the insurance is after some sort of uh risk assessment and management plan and implementing that plan. 00:39:08.880 --> 00:39:10.559 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I that would make sense to me. 00:39:10.639 --> 00:39:21.360 <v Pascale Vacca>Like, yeah, in Europe we we have not seen yet insurance being a stakeholder in in this problem, they have not yet participated in this. 00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:27.519 <v Pascale Vacca>I think in the next years they will have to they will have to participate in this problem. 00:39:27.519 --> 00:39:37.199 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh and actually I think insurance might play a very big role when it comes to preparedness and prevention of the homeowner. 00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:48.079 <v Pascale Vacca>Because they can say, like, okay, if your home doesn't respect these characteristics, I cannot insure you, or uh your insurance fee is gonna be really high. 00:39:48.079 --> 00:39:55.199 <v Pascale Vacca>If you implement some vulnerability reduction strategies, then I can lower your fee. 00:39:55.199 --> 00:40:02.719 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, so I think they have a big role to play in here when it comes to preparedness and prevention. 00:40:02.719 --> 00:40:06.000 <v Pascale Vacca>But in Europe, we have not seen that yet. 00:40:06.320 --> 00:40:16.880 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, I mean, and for fire engineers' perspective, I think this is important because it's very unlikely that the insurance person will do the assessment on their own. 00:40:16.880 --> 00:40:30.719 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like in this case, I think they would have to uh really use some third-party fire engineering principle with competencies, like uh uh, etc., to believe that this assessment is done well. 00:40:30.719 --> 00:40:37.440 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like when you insure a house, there's a assessor that assesses the value of the house in in such a way. 00:40:37.440 --> 00:40:48.800 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Well, that is just like we could probably go go much deeper on this, but this is an interesting feature and and the context of of why your keynote is important because that truly is the future of fire safety engineers. 00:40:48.800 --> 00:40:54.320 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Um, in this in in this, you use two keywords, risk prevention and risk mitigation. 00:40:54.320 --> 00:40:56.639 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Is there a distinct difference between them? 00:40:56.639 --> 00:41:00.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Is it is it important, or is it just two words that are used for the same thing? 00:41:00.559 --> 00:41:02.639 <v Pascale Vacca>No, I think that there's a difference in there. 00:41:02.639 --> 00:41:19.360 <v Pascale Vacca>So risk mitigation strategies are those that you implement when you know uh when you've done your risk assessment, uh, and you know, okay, these are my vulnerabilities, uh, and this is what I can do to uh to reduce uh the risk in general. 00:41:19.360 --> 00:41:34.719 <v Pascale Vacca>But mainly when we talk about a risk at the Wii, I think we can mostly work on reducing vulnerability because the hazards are gonna be there because if you're in a wildfire prone area, you know, there's gonna be wildfires. 00:41:34.719 --> 00:41:44.000 <v Pascale Vacca>You can touch a little bit on exposure, but then you know, there's still gonna be the fire's still gonna be reaching in some ways. 00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:46.239 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh it's gonna be reaching the community. 00:41:46.239 --> 00:41:52.719 <v Pascale Vacca>So I think vulnerability is is where we can do the most work to reduce then the risk. 00:41:52.719 --> 00:42:10.079 <v Pascale Vacca>And um when it comes to preparedness, this is more like these are actions that you do every day to um make sure that when the fire is arriving, you are not vulnerable to the fire or not as vulnerable as you should be. 00:42:10.079 --> 00:42:17.760 <v Pascale Vacca>Um I have done actions that can help reduce vulnerability, but I have done them. 00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:29.840 <v Pascale Vacca>So it's not that I, you know, in the management, I've identified the action and in the preparedness, it's I've maintained for a long time this action because of course things are changing constantly. 00:42:29.840 --> 00:42:35.519 <v Pascale Vacca>The vegetation is growing again, the fuels that I have around my building are changing constantly. 00:42:35.519 --> 00:42:47.760 <v Pascale Vacca>If I don't maintain them, then it's gonna be so preparedness, it's more for me about like constantly maintaining this this faith so that once the event happens, I am prepared for it. 00:42:47.760 --> 00:42:51.360 <v Pascale Vacca>I've done all that I can to reduce the risk. 00:42:52.159 --> 00:42:57.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And in this in this preparedness stage, is do you see a lot of work for fire safety engineering? 00:42:57.599 --> 00:43:01.679 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I I think this is the part where spreading the knowledge is the thing, education. 00:43:01.760 --> 00:43:10.800 <v Pascale Vacca>I don't know, like yeah, so this is where basically we, as you said, we we go out to the world and spread the information. 00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:14.880 <v Pascale Vacca>In the US and in Canada, there are great examples of this. 00:43:14.880 --> 00:43:30.719 <v Pascale Vacca>We have what is called a preparedness day, it's once a year, and they get the community gets together, they learn about risk of wildfires, they learn about the vulnerabilities of their community, and they work together to reduce uh the vulnerabilities. 00:43:30.719 --> 00:43:35.440 <v Pascale Vacca>So I think this is where the fire engineer comes here as an expert. 00:43:35.440 --> 00:43:42.159 <v Pascale Vacca>Okay, so they talk with the community as an expert to show, okay, these are the actions that you can do. 00:43:42.159 --> 00:43:52.320 <v Pascale Vacca>I've analyzed this in a scientific way, in an engineering way, so I can tell you which actions will be effective specifically for your case. 00:43:52.320 --> 00:43:56.000 <v Pascale Vacca>This is also something that's really important when we talk to a community. 00:43:56.000 --> 00:44:02.159 <v Pascale Vacca>It's really important to be very specific with the characteristics of the community. 00:44:02.159 --> 00:44:08.159 <v Pascale Vacca>We've had several meetings with communities here located at the WI here in Spain. 00:44:08.159 --> 00:44:17.199 <v Pascale Vacca>And what we've seen is that they already know, because here, of course, uh there's a little bit of risk awareness already when it comes to the population. 00:44:17.199 --> 00:44:19.599 <v Pascale Vacca>Not very much, but a little bit. 00:44:19.599 --> 00:44:27.119 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh so they already know a bit the general spiel of, you know, uh, okay, we're in a wildfire prone area. 00:44:27.119 --> 00:44:33.920 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, you know, if uh the firefighters tell you to stay inside, you should stay inside, you should not evacuate. 00:44:33.920 --> 00:44:44.000 <v Pascale Vacca>But what they actually want to know is, okay, for my community specifically, for the characteristics of my community, the fuels that I have around, what should I do? 00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:50.480 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is really, really important to then address, address the issue community per community. 00:44:50.800 --> 00:44:58.079 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In case of the community you were investigating as your case study, did you did you have the chance to reach this phase and to work with the community? 00:44:58.320 --> 00:45:04.239 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, so we are working with three different communities through the Fire Prime project. 00:45:04.239 --> 00:45:12.480 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, this is a project that's funded by the DG ECOS, the European uh Union uh civil protection mechanism. 00:45:12.480 --> 00:45:15.679 <v Pascale Vacca>And so in this project, we really focus on preparedness. 00:45:15.679 --> 00:45:27.360 <v Pascale Vacca>So we had a first preparedness day as well with these three communities, and the first one was a bit more general, and the feedback that we got was exactly this. 00:45:27.360 --> 00:45:32.239 <v Pascale Vacca>They said, okay, we really want to know what uh with our community, what's gonna happen. 00:45:32.239 --> 00:45:41.920 <v Pascale Vacca>So then we're gonna have a second one actually in two weeks, and the plan is to divide the uh people between the three communities. 00:45:41.920 --> 00:45:54.159 <v Pascale Vacca>So we will have, let's say, one table per community, we'll put a map on the table and we actually analyze okay, what's gonna happen in case of a wildfire when it approaches your community? 00:45:54.159 --> 00:45:58.159 <v Pascale Vacca>So we have had really great feedback from the community. 00:45:58.159 --> 00:46:09.679 <v Pascale Vacca>We also uh we are in the phase of developing an app, a phone app, uh, for the homeowner to be aware of the risk at his parcel. 00:46:09.679 --> 00:46:30.000 <v Pascale Vacca>So we ask several questions about the state of the building, about the building materials, about the state of the surroundings, and then the homeowner gets a score for vulnerability of its time for the hazard, which is based, um, this is based on the on the danger map. 00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.320 <v Pascale Vacca>And then we multiply vulnerability with the hazard to get the risk. 00:46:34.320 --> 00:46:48.079 <v Pascale Vacca>So the homeowner gets a score of risk for his house, and then he gets suggestions on how to reduce on this part on how to reduce the vulnerability because of course, about the hazard, it's on a map, you cannot do much about that. 00:46:48.079 --> 00:46:54.079 <v Pascale Vacca>And we also got great feedback from the uh people that we worked with on the app. 00:46:54.079 --> 00:47:04.239 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh so we're really honestly we're we're really happy uh when uh we collaborate with the communities and when they are actually uh really willing to collaborate with us. 00:47:04.639 --> 00:47:08.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's encouraging, but I think they they must consider you as allies. 00:47:08.480 --> 00:47:15.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like you're not uh like you know, when I when I'm a fire safety engineer and I go to construction site, oh boy, I'm not an ally. 00:47:15.599 --> 00:47:21.840 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like I'm the I am the most annoying person in the in the construction yard, and everyone hates me. 00:47:21.840 --> 00:47:30.719 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like because I tell them things that they do not like, I tell I tell them things that everything's wrong and you have to fix it, and it costs money and time, and they hate me. 00:47:30.719 --> 00:47:40.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But I think when you're when you when the product is the safety of community and the people you work with, they care to be be safe, they care that their children are safe. 00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:51.760 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And if you tell them you see your your your roof is kind of creating you an unsafe regime and this is why, I think they're they don't treat you as a hostile, telling you oh, your roof is wrong. 00:47:51.760 --> 00:47:59.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>You're someone giving them a helping hand, telling you know what, from all the things that could happen, the roof is probably the one that's gonna go wrong. 00:47:59.920 --> 00:48:02.639 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I feel it's a different kind of dynamic. 00:48:02.639 --> 00:48:11.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Perhaps if you come there with an insurance agent who wants to uh increase their premium, you're not gonna be that welcomed, but uh but I think working with community is nice. 00:48:11.119 --> 00:48:14.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I I also think this is the the phase where it ends if there's no fire. 00:48:14.960 --> 00:48:19.280 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because uh with with this, if there's no fire, there's no response, there's no recovery. 00:48:19.280 --> 00:48:21.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So eventually go back to assessment. 00:48:21.920 --> 00:48:25.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How often those cycles should repeat, like reassessments? 00:48:25.119 --> 00:48:26.639 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Three years, five years? 00:48:26.800 --> 00:48:28.960 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh that's a great question. 00:48:28.960 --> 00:48:36.639 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh honestly, in the context of climate change, I guess we would have to look at the assessment regularly. 00:48:36.639 --> 00:48:41.039 <v Pascale Vacca>I don't know if five years, a five-year cycle is enough. 00:48:41.039 --> 00:48:44.239 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, or we should do it every two years. 00:48:44.239 --> 00:48:53.920 <v Pascale Vacca>This also depends on on what you know how how much things are changing in the landscape, how much things are being done. 00:48:53.920 --> 00:48:59.920 <v Pascale Vacca>For example, if you have to implement the fuel break, you do it year one, then it's perfect. 00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:01.920 <v Pascale Vacca>Okay, then you have a great fuel break. 00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:04.800 <v Pascale Vacca>Year two, okay, you have some vegetation growing. 00:49:04.800 --> 00:49:20.320 <v Pascale Vacca>Year five, you might have to, you know, if if no maintenance happened, then of course your risk assessment is not valid anymore because if you counted on this fuel break and it's not there anymore, then you know results have changed. 00:49:20.320 --> 00:49:24.719 <v Pascale Vacca>So yeah, I mean, it's constantly a changing landscape. 00:49:24.719 --> 00:49:26.880 <v Pascale Vacca>So we need to think about this. 00:49:26.880 --> 00:49:36.159 <v Pascale Vacca>And also temperatures are going up every every year, temperatures are increasing, which means moisture level of the vegetation is going down. 00:49:36.159 --> 00:49:39.519 <v Pascale Vacca>So yeah, this is not something that's done once and that's it. 00:49:40.320 --> 00:49:48.639 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>If we want this to become an engineering product and a service, I think this is an important aspect of that product to be well thought. 00:49:48.639 --> 00:49:55.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Perhaps a fuel survey should be done every year, or reassessment of change should be done every year. 00:49:55.599 --> 00:50:05.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And based on that, you can say, okay, you know what, there is a sufficient amount of change that you need to repeat uh the modeling parts, or you need to repeat the the far side simulation, whatever. 00:50:05.599 --> 00:50:18.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There's a lot of work for us as people who are you know thinking the the frameworks for you to figure out that because I it if this becomes a product, it it needs to come with its information. 00:50:18.239 --> 00:50:25.280 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like you see, this is like it's not you're buying a one-time assessment for your uh uh hundred years of your village. 00:50:25.280 --> 00:50:29.039 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's it's like it's gonna change and and you have to readjust. 00:50:29.039 --> 00:50:34.719 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>In the response and recovery phases, like do we really have a lot of stuff to do? 00:50:34.719 --> 00:50:39.360 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I in recovery, I guess yes, but uh in the response, how do you feel about that? 00:50:39.760 --> 00:50:50.559 <v Pascale Vacca>Well, in response, this is uh I I don't know if we can do something like that's immediate in the sense okay, there's a fire, uh, I can help out on this. 00:50:50.559 --> 00:50:58.480 <v Pascale Vacca>What we can do for the response part is more thinking ahead and looking at suppression options that we might have. 00:50:58.480 --> 00:51:02.480 <v Pascale Vacca>I told you SETEC has a bit of history in looking at fire retardants. 00:51:02.480 --> 00:51:13.039 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is where also we can participate in this, or looking at the suppression infrastructure, you know, do we have enough water points in the community or not? 00:51:13.039 --> 00:51:16.639 <v Pascale Vacca>Where can, you know, where's the water going to be coming from? 00:51:16.639 --> 00:51:21.679 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, we can support more in things like that. 00:51:21.679 --> 00:51:27.519 <v Pascale Vacca>So support uh the the people that then are gonna go on the field to actually suppress the fire. 00:51:27.840 --> 00:51:35.199 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Though arguably if you do a great job at assessment uh stage with your analysis, that this will be useful in the response. 00:51:35.519 --> 00:51:37.360 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, for sure, for sure. 00:51:37.360 --> 00:52:00.800 <v Pascale Vacca>And so if you do a great job in the assessment and then in setting litigation measurements, then uh you're really aiding the fire brigade in the sense that they are more um they're not as concerned with the community because they know that uh you know some actions have been have been done to reduce the vulnerability or the risk. 00:52:00.800 --> 00:52:11.039 <v Pascale Vacca>Um so they can focus a bit more on actually going and suppress the wildfire than on putting all the energies in protecting a community. 00:52:11.039 --> 00:52:24.320 <v Pascale Vacca>Um at the moment, what we are seeing with the firefighters is that they have to employ a lot of people in protecting communities, and of course, it there's a limited amount of uh of firefighters. 00:52:24.320 --> 00:52:36.079 <v Pascale Vacca>So if they are all placed by the communities, then nobody's going to stop the wildfire, or they only have a chance to stop the wildfire when it's actually reaching the community. 00:52:36.079 --> 00:52:52.320 <v Pascale Vacca>So for sharing with this, uh also when when we talk uh with the firefighters here of Barcelona, what's really important for them when it comes to the risk assessment is to know whether a community is really, really vulnerable. 00:52:52.320 --> 00:52:58.639 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, because if it is, then they say, okay, at moment zero of the welfare, everybody out of this community. 00:52:58.639 --> 00:53:01.840 <v Pascale Vacca>You know, uh evacuation should happen immediately. 00:53:01.840 --> 00:53:07.199 <v Pascale Vacca>One, if they know that the community is not as vulnerable, they can wait a little bit. 00:53:07.199 --> 00:53:15.679 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, because now, in specifically in Catalunya, the strategy is more of shelter in place uh rather than evacuate. 00:53:15.679 --> 00:53:25.840 <v Pascale Vacca>After what happened in Mati and in and in Portugal, where you know people actually died on the roads evacuating, this is something that's really scary. 00:53:25.840 --> 00:53:42.559 <v Pascale Vacca>So because our homes are made of mainly of non-combustible materials, so they are less vulnerable to fire, they are the strategy now is to ask people to shelter in place, and they are only evacuating areas where they see that okay, shelter in place is not an option. 00:53:42.960 --> 00:53:50.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I though this is again based on previous assessment, not something that's happening while the fire happens. 00:53:50.239 --> 00:53:55.199 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There's no time for fire modeling, there's no time for parametric fire side simulations when the fire happens. 00:53:55.440 --> 00:54:04.639 <v Pascale Vacca>Well, when the fire happens, the firefighters have fire analysts that are running simulations to have an idea, okay, in in four hours, where's the fire gonna be at? 00:54:04.639 --> 00:54:08.320 <v Pascale Vacca>To then plan, okay, should we is the fire gonna impact this community? 00:54:08.320 --> 00:54:09.119 <v Pascale Vacca>Yes and no. 00:54:09.119 --> 00:54:23.840 <v Pascale Vacca>So they do have these uh fire analysts that once the ignition happens, they are running scenarios to then guide those that are on the field to tell them, okay, it's gonna reach this village, we have to evacuate it or not, you know. 00:54:24.320 --> 00:54:28.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So in this case, the fire service is another place where uh fire engineers could be needed. 00:54:28.960 --> 00:54:32.880 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Prefer uh in a preferred way, uh, firefighters who are fire engineers. 00:54:32.880 --> 00:54:33.840 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's actually what's important. 00:54:33.840 --> 00:54:38.639 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The firefighting officers are fire engineers in Poland, every single of them. 00:54:38.719 --> 00:54:43.360 <v Pascale Vacca>So fire engineers are or in this case, if we talk about the landscape forest engineers. 00:54:44.320 --> 00:54:45.440 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Okay, that's probably more rare. 00:54:45.440 --> 00:54:50.079 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh and uh in the recovery phase, uh, what's happened then? 00:54:50.079 --> 00:54:54.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Assessment of the vulnerabilities and failures and rebuild without them? 00:54:55.199 --> 00:55:00.639 <v Pascale Vacca>This is where we can also uh have a you know, we do a great job there. 00:55:00.639 --> 00:55:18.239 <v Pascale Vacca>First of all, collecting all the information on what happened, uh, what happened to the buildings that ignited or that did not ignite, you know, then you analyze the characteristics of the buildings that were not as damaged and those that were damaged to make a comparison. 00:55:18.239 --> 00:55:26.079 <v Pascale Vacca>So ideally, again, in the ideal world, we would have a database that's available for everybody with all that information. 00:55:26.079 --> 00:55:48.719 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, so this is something that we would like to push for at some in some moment to have a database where we have information on past fires and what happened, because this is then really useful uh for the recovery phase to know, like, okay, this community, for example, the buildings ignited because there was another building close by that ignited, and then the fire spread building to building. 00:55:48.719 --> 00:55:56.800 <v Pascale Vacca>So it was not an issue of the fire spreading through the vegetation anymore, but it was a fire spread building from one building to another. 00:55:56.800 --> 00:56:14.400 <v Pascale Vacca>Then in this case, we can suggest when rebuilding, this is really difficult to then implement, but we can suggest to increase separation distances, for example, or remove uh as much of the combustible elements of the building, uh, you know, as much as possible. 00:56:14.400 --> 00:56:27.599 <v Pascale Vacca>Or if the fire spread more through the fuels uh inside the community, then you can think about okay, maybe when we rebuild, we should remove these types of fuels and replace them with another type. 00:56:27.599 --> 00:56:34.400 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is something where where we can suggest a way to rebuild that is more, let's call it fire adaptive. 00:56:34.639 --> 00:56:38.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm not so hyper-optimist about you know the database of previous fire studies. 00:56:38.960 --> 00:56:46.320 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Because it's it's really a lot of data to go through and it's a lot of uh knowledge to be to be built. 00:56:46.320 --> 00:56:54.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like I I just had a few episodes ago, uh Eric Link from uh from NIST when when they were doing the campfire study. 00:56:54.239 --> 00:57:02.079 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And and it's just a single wildfire, but it's such a massive study, you know, to go in depth over that one one campfire. 00:57:02.079 --> 00:57:21.679 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And there has been since then probably like 20, 30 wildfires of maybe not the same like horrible outcomes and and the magnitude of destruction, but but large wildfires which could have been studied in the same like uh systematic way, and each of them could be a two, three-year research project, you know, to go in depth. 00:57:21.679 --> 00:57:27.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So actually, I mean, I understand why we would need that and why it would be awesome to have that. 00:57:27.119 --> 00:57:30.400 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's just very difficult to get to that point. 00:57:30.800 --> 00:57:37.840 <v Pascale Vacca>I think in Europe it might be a bit easier to implement because we don't have as many losses. 00:57:37.840 --> 00:57:56.719 <v Pascale Vacca>So, for example, here we had uh a firefighter, firefighting corps that there's a section just dedicated to looking at the structural elements of the building once a fire has happened to see whether you know the structure is gonna collapse or not, whether people can go back to their homes or not. 00:57:56.719 --> 00:58:03.920 <v Pascale Vacca>And they are collecting all this information, but it remains with them, you know, with that it's not made available. 00:58:03.920 --> 00:58:08.079 <v Pascale Vacca>So we already have people that are collecting this information. 00:58:08.079 --> 00:58:15.039 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh so we just need one more step to where, like, if we ask for it, it's there to analyze. 00:58:15.360 --> 00:58:21.840 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I would highly love uh to have access to such information, and I'm very happy to receive one. 00:58:21.840 --> 00:58:32.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And uh I support any uh work towards uh standardized reporting and improvements in data collection, especially to the fire response and structural response of buildings to fires. 00:58:32.960 --> 00:58:41.679 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Um a question that I've asked you during the conference, and uh now you have more time to answer that than on the conference. 00:58:41.679 --> 00:58:58.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So you're using a lot of tools, and and those tools are are often used, let's maybe not beyond the scope, but beyond the comfort zone of a fire safety engineer, like applying FDS to this external fire spread, uh applying fire site to create you uh a burner for FDS. 00:58:58.159 --> 00:59:06.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>How do you feel about the validation studies of those tools in terms of I don't see anything wrong with using them right now? 00:59:06.159 --> 00:59:08.480 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like you said, we work with what we have. 00:59:08.480 --> 00:59:18.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But how what do we base our opinion that they're applicable to the scenarios and how we how we care for validity of those tools in this usage right now? 00:59:18.400 --> 00:59:30.079 <v Pascale Vacca>So uh I know of a uh some studies that have been done in a I don't know if to call it a prescribed burn or uh let's say a small experiment. 00:59:30.079 --> 00:59:39.599 <v Pascale Vacca>Basically, they had uh a small hill and then they placed and let's say uh a fake house on the top of the hill. 00:59:39.599 --> 00:59:46.239 <v Pascale Vacca>So they built some, you know, with some concrete blocks, and it was, I mean, if it was shrubland, the vegetation. 00:59:46.239 --> 00:59:59.840 <v Pascale Vacca>So they started with the fire line, they started the fire, and they made it run through the hill, and then well, through the hill, through the small slope that they had, and then they placed sensors on this house, and then. 00:59:59.840 --> 01:00:03.280 <v Pascale Vacca>And they run FDS simulations based on this. 01:00:03.280 --> 01:00:10.719 <v Pascale Vacca>So this is one of the ways where we can see whether FDS can actually predict what's happening in reality or not. 01:00:10.719 --> 01:00:12.880 <v Pascale Vacca>Or whether we are completely off. 01:00:12.880 --> 01:00:18.480 <v Pascale Vacca>Now, I've only seen, let's say, maybe two or three studies of this. 01:00:18.480 --> 01:00:21.440 <v Pascale Vacca>So for sure, there's more work to be done there. 01:00:21.440 --> 01:00:32.000 <v Pascale Vacca>I mean, for us uh researchers, it's always nice to do an experiment and then uh, you know, validate run an FDS simulation with this. 01:00:32.000 --> 01:00:35.679 <v Pascale Vacca>So this would be uh a path that we can follow. 01:00:35.679 --> 01:00:49.039 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh it's not always possible to do experiments, and especially this was a very quite a controlled environment when it comes about a wildfire that's you know in the landscape, it's built up a lot, the intensity is huge. 01:00:49.039 --> 01:00:58.880 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, this, of course, is it's much more difficult to unless when there's a real wildfire, you go to a house and you place your thermocouples and your death. 01:00:58.880 --> 01:01:01.360 <v Pascale Vacca>But I see it's much more difficult. 01:01:01.760 --> 01:01:06.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think people would be pissed like they're evacuating, like, could I just like leave a thermocouple in here? 01:01:06.960 --> 01:01:07.599 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, yeah. 01:01:07.599 --> 01:01:13.039 <v Pascale Vacca>Here we would think about have to think about the ethics uh of it all the further. 01:01:13.039 --> 01:01:22.320 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, but then another thing that's being worked on right now is to simulate vegetation as particles in FDS. 01:01:22.320 --> 01:01:32.800 <v Pascale Vacca>And this is something interesting because when it comes to, for example, to firesight, when you've done a fuel treatment, you cannot really analyze this on firesight. 01:01:32.800 --> 01:01:47.599 <v Pascale Vacca>And also, and the same, like when you put the inputs in FDS, when you put your fire inputs, you don't really know what uh you know what the heat release of perianitaria will be of that piece of uh vegetation that's been treated versus not. 01:01:47.599 --> 01:01:53.920 <v Pascale Vacca>So the particle method would be something that's interesting to look at this type of scenarios. 01:01:53.920 --> 01:01:58.000 <v Pascale Vacca>When I've applied fuel treatment, so my bulk density has been reduced. 01:01:58.000 --> 01:02:03.280 <v Pascale Vacca>I have much less vegetation, I have, let's say, maybe a bit more of a surface vegetation. 01:02:03.280 --> 01:02:09.280 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, I have trees that with no vegetation touching the surface, so they have been pruned. 01:02:09.280 --> 01:02:12.400 <v Pascale Vacca>But and this is something that's been worked on. 01:02:12.400 --> 01:02:17.679 <v Pascale Vacca>Um, we've had a little bit of a validation happening with uh the work of Mel. 01:02:17.679 --> 01:02:26.239 <v Pascale Vacca>Uh, and I know that in Maryland they are working on this as well, but we're still, I would say, in the in the initial phases of this. 01:02:26.639 --> 01:02:31.599 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Yeah, the other end would be like take the real-world case studies and simulate those fires. 01:02:31.599 --> 01:02:37.039 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But again, I I would find it quite difficult and on a scale of a very large research project. 01:02:37.039 --> 01:02:43.360 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think an interesting amount of knowledge will come uh out of maturity of the of the method. 01:02:43.360 --> 01:02:48.079 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I can imagine this method is applied to, let's say, a thousand communities. 01:02:48.079 --> 01:02:56.400 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And then unfortunately, there must be a fire in some of them because we're we are doing that because they are at risk, because the fire is a real problem. 01:02:56.400 --> 01:03:04.400 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's not a made-up problem, it's a real problem that can touch them, which means the probability a fire will happen in those communities is is quite large. 01:03:04.400 --> 01:03:06.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So there must be fires. 01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:14.639 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And and when there are fires, you can go back to the assessment and see how well uh this matched with the real with the real fire. 01:03:14.639 --> 01:03:18.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And I think these difficult lessons, there will be difficult lessons. 01:03:18.000 --> 01:03:30.719 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There will be times when we get it perfectly, there will be times where we've done uh horrible work and it went uh quite opposite, either through our uh mistakes or inability to account for some things we were not aware of. 01:03:30.719 --> 01:03:35.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But I think from those we will get the lessons on on the applicability of the tools. 01:03:35.119 --> 01:03:42.880 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And uh also, you know, uh, I think a lot of safety comes from the process, not necessarily the outcomes of your uh calculations, you know. 01:03:42.880 --> 01:03:44.880 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So that's what chemical engineers tell me. 01:03:44.880 --> 01:03:46.559 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Like the process is the important part. 01:03:46.559 --> 01:03:54.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>The outcomes are are nice and and and important, but the process thinking about it, asking questions, like uh reassessing that that's the important part. 01:03:54.400 --> 01:04:05.280 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, and I wanted to say also really highlight the fact that um so you run on the simulations, you have your results, you implement uh your risk reduction measures. 01:04:05.280 --> 01:04:07.760 <v Pascale Vacca>Risk is never gonna be zero. 01:04:07.760 --> 01:04:13.280 <v Pascale Vacca>Okay, so even if you do everything correctly, we've seen examples in Canada. 01:04:13.280 --> 01:04:28.400 <v Pascale Vacca>I've seen several videos where they had homes were like in perfect conditions, the gardens were in perfect conditions, nothing there, just the green grass, and still you can see the fire brands doing lots of damage. 01:04:28.400 --> 01:04:34.159 <v Pascale Vacca>So we can for sure help in reducing the risk and reducing vulnerabilities. 01:04:34.159 --> 01:04:39.679 <v Pascale Vacca>But it's really important that we also communicate that you know it's not a risk, it's never gonna be zero. 01:04:39.679 --> 01:04:43.119 <v Pascale Vacca>And for me, the uh we can do what we have done, what we can. 01:04:43.119 --> 01:04:46.159 <v Pascale Vacca>For sure, we can limit losses a lot, but yeah. 01:04:46.400 --> 01:04:53.519 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>There are arguably if if if there was a fire that destroyed the hardened house, it's unlikely that an unhardened house will survive. 01:04:53.519 --> 01:04:56.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's still like uh an improvement. 01:04:56.000 --> 01:05:00.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's just it's just sometimes the scale of the improvement is is insufficient for the problem. 01:05:00.239 --> 01:05:04.639 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>But nevertheless, I think it doesn't, it shouldn't prevent us from doing the job. 01:05:04.639 --> 01:05:11.840 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And as we do more of that, as we gain expertise, as the tools improve, we will be just better and better in doing that. 01:05:11.840 --> 01:05:22.639 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So um perhaps some final words uh your message to the world of fire safety engineering, uh, after all of this, let's encourage them to look into the problem of all-land urban interface fire management. 01:05:22.960 --> 01:05:23.679 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, of course. 01:05:23.679 --> 01:05:32.639 <v Pascale Vacca>So we have, as I said, uh great opportunities, great challenges when it comes to this for fire safety engineers because it's a new field. 01:05:32.639 --> 01:05:39.280 <v Pascale Vacca>It's something that emerged recently, the the need of risk reduction at the uh at the Wen and Urban Interface. 01:05:39.280 --> 01:05:42.159 <v Pascale Vacca>You know, it's something that emerged in the last 10 years. 01:05:42.159 --> 01:05:46.800 <v Pascale Vacca>So uh lots of research to be done, lots of tools that are available. 01:05:46.800 --> 01:05:55.599 <v Pascale Vacca>As we said, they might not be very perfect, but there are tools available for engineers that they can use to analyze the problem. 01:05:55.599 --> 01:06:07.679 <v Pascale Vacca>But also another thing that I think we should be focusing on in the next years is on the education of fire safety engineers to the woey fire problem. 01:06:07.679 --> 01:06:11.360 <v Pascale Vacca>We are used to scenarios of fires inside buildings. 01:06:11.360 --> 01:06:16.079 <v Pascale Vacca>When it comes from the outside and when it comes from the vegetation, it's different. 01:06:16.079 --> 01:06:24.719 <v Pascale Vacca>So we also have to be aware that we need more training on this, we need more education on this as well. 01:06:24.719 --> 01:06:47.199 <v Pascale Vacca>So we should provide courses to professionals, we should implement uh when fire behavior modeling, for example, or we fire is in what we are teaching uh to fire safety engineers now because we are seeing that this is a problem, that it's gonna become more important and it's gonna worsen in the in the next years. 01:06:47.199 --> 01:06:58.239 <v Pascale Vacca>So, yeah, I really encourage uh fire engineers to look into go into this issue and see where they can help out the communities that are located in in woe areas. 01:06:58.559 --> 01:06:59.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Fantastic. 01:06:59.119 --> 01:07:07.760 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And uh, for me, the first step is to record podcast episodes like this with people who are on the front line developing those tools and changing the fire profession. 01:07:07.760 --> 01:07:12.960 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Pascal, thank you for uh great keynote at uh ESFS at Ljubljana. 01:07:12.960 --> 01:07:14.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It was a pleasure. 01:07:14.159 --> 01:07:15.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, thank you for this interview. 01:07:15.920 --> 01:07:19.039 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think we were we had a chance to go deeper on some of the things. 01:07:19.039 --> 01:07:28.400 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh, we went a little more shallow on some of the things, uh, but uh there will be papers, there will be other works coming from from you so people can build that the whole image. 01:07:28.400 --> 01:07:36.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Uh and uh for me it was uh just just fun to have you in the podcast and discuss how the profession is changing, uh whether we like it or not. 01:07:36.159 --> 01:07:37.199 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think it's for the good. 01:07:37.440 --> 01:07:47.280 <v Pascale Vacca>Yeah, thank you so much for having you, it was uh really, really nice to have this chat and yeah, to spread the word on uh Wi-Fi's and the Wi-Fi. 01:07:47.760 --> 01:07:49.039 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>And that's it, thank you for listening. 01:07:49.039 --> 01:08:01.679 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm happy that Fire Engineer could have a work at every single stage of this uh preparedness process, uh including recovery, including communicating the solutions with other stakeholders. 01:08:01.679 --> 01:08:08.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It's not just a one-off where just needed to run an FDS simulation at the start and then others carry on. 01:08:08.000 --> 01:08:19.680 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I think support of fire engineers could be all along the process and it could be a continuous thing actually, because you do assessment, but then you have to do a reassessment every now and then. 01:08:19.680 --> 01:08:29.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I also think fire engineers could perhaps expand their knowledge and uh and skills perhaps through mapping the terrains, mapping the fuels. 01:08:29.920 --> 01:08:43.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So far the models take very basic assumptions for the fuels, but I think fire safety engineers could figure out like much better ways to map the fuels and use them as variables in their fire safety assessments. 01:08:43.920 --> 01:08:46.560 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So I see a lot of work there. 01:08:46.560 --> 01:08:52.399 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Of course, there's a ton of work in modeling space, far sight simulations, very interesting. 01:08:52.399 --> 01:09:00.560 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Applying weather conditions to your simulations, oh that's extremely challenging, but yet very uh very interesting thing. 01:09:00.560 --> 01:09:07.600 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Running those FTS in in terrain um simulations, perhaps using Lagrangian particles as your fuel source. 01:09:07.600 --> 01:09:18.000 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Very interesting concept, very challenging, but uh yeah, it's it's something that can be done today already and can serve a purpose like like uh Pascal has shown. 01:09:18.000 --> 01:09:26.640 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So uh outside of that, of course you have the entire evacuation uh layer which we have not even covered with Pascal. 01:09:26.640 --> 01:09:29.680 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>That's more in liking of a Woodity project. 01:09:29.680 --> 01:09:32.319 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I had two episodes on that previously in the podcast. 01:09:32.319 --> 01:09:36.239 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I've talked with Enrico, I talked with Harry and Nick from Hays Lab. 01:09:36.239 --> 01:09:47.680 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>So the a whole layer of research that's being done in how to safely evacuate communities, how to drive the traffic, how to make sure that people can escape when they need to, you know. 01:09:47.680 --> 01:09:59.039 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Take all those puzzles uh together and you get some sort of uh wildfire acid, wildfire RCET analysis, which in the end is the core of fire safety engineering. 01:09:59.039 --> 01:10:01.760 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>With just one other word outside of that. 01:10:01.760 --> 01:10:12.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>This is exactly what we have been doing for buildings for years, and today the same philosophies could perhaps be extended to wildland urban interface areas. 01:10:12.159 --> 01:10:13.520 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>This is very exciting to me. 01:10:13.520 --> 01:10:15.119 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I'm not sure if you're excited. 01:10:15.119 --> 01:10:19.520 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I I wonder if you see opportunity for growth for fire safety engineering today. 01:10:19.520 --> 01:10:42.560 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I mean, on one hand, it's not that we're gonna drop our jobs today and start doing those types of analysis, but if companies invest in this space, if products emerge which are easy to use, which are very straightforward to be applied, you know, someone just offers like a package from mapping the fuel till the final report and then assessment results and actionable advice. 01:10:42.560 --> 01:10:51.359 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>I am absolutely sure there will be uh communities that would be willing to pay for that as a product because people want to invest in their safety. 01:10:51.359 --> 01:10:53.680 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Anyway, it's already a very long podcast episode. 01:10:53.680 --> 01:10:56.159 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you, Pascal, for this uh interview. 01:10:56.159 --> 01:10:58.720 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>It was a pleasure to have you in the Fire Science Show. 01:10:58.720 --> 01:11:04.560 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you for being here with me this Wednesday, and I hope to see you at the same place, same time next week. 01:11:04.560 --> 01:11:05.920 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Thank you very much, cheers. 01:11:05.920 --> 01:11:06.560 <v Wojciech Wegrzynski>Bye.

222 - Integrating WUI risk management and fire safety engineering with Pascale Vacca

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