TITLE:
A Method for the Application of Numerical Simulations during Firefighting Operations Using Pre-Simulated, Model-Based Fire Scenarios
AUTHORS:
Puyan Abolghasem Zadeh, Uwe Rüppel
KEYWORDS:
Fire Simulation; Model-based Fire Scenario; Firefighting; Decision Making Support; Building Information Modeling
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Civil Engineering,
Vol.3 No.2A,
June
14,
2013
ABSTRACT:
The spread of fire and smoke during a fire incident
plays a crucial role in rescuing people from the burning building. So it is
important for the decision makers (the head of rescue staff) to get a
prediction about the spread of fire inside the building through computational
techniques like numerical fire simulations. But these techniques require
advanced mathematical knowledge and are very time consuming. This paper
presents a new method which employs a set of pre-simulated and
model-based scenarios to find the closest one to the real fire and present its
results to the decision makers. For this purpose, we shift the performance
consuming numerical fire simulations into a former phase by integration of
these simulations into the planning process of the building. This is realized
by enhancing the methods of Building Information Modeling
(BIM). To provide the fire simulation results during a real case, our new
concept includes a scenario database where all simulated fire scenarios will
be collected. In a real case, a special search algorithm will go through this
database to find the closest pre-simulated fire scenario to the real fire on
the basis of reported information from the burning building.