Fire Threat Research Articles

A novel P/Ni-doped g-C3N4 nanosheets for improving mechanical, thermal and flame-retardant properties of acrylonitrile–butadienestyrene resin

The ubiquitous application of highly flammable acrylonitrile–butadienestyrene (ABS) resin has brought great fire threat to human and environment. Unfortunately, current flame retardants often improve flame retardancy but reduce mechanical and thermal properties, seriously affecting their practical application. We herein reported novel multifunctional, high-efficiency, phosphorus and nickel co-doped graphitic carbon nitride (Ni-P-C3N4) nanoflakes to address the trade-off between flame retardancy and mechanical/thermal properties. The addition of 2.0wt% of Ni-P-C3N4 increased the initial degradation temperature and tensile strength of ABS composite (ABS/Ni-P-CN2) by 15 °C and 24.3% relative to virgin ABS, indicating its positive effect on thermal and mechanical properties. Compared with ABS, ABS/Ni-P-CN2 exhibited a notable increase in time to ignition, along with 32.4% and 33.8% reductions in peak heat release rate (PHRR) and peak smoke production rate (PSPR), demonstrating excellent anti-ignition, flame-retardant and smoke-suppressive performances. The increased fire safety was mainly due to the physical barrier effect of g-C3N4 nanosheets and the catalytic charring effect of P and Ni. This work offers a novel design strategy to create multifunctional flame retardants for fabricating fire-safe polymer composites with superior thermal and mechanical properties, holding great potential in industries.

A Latent‐Fire‐Detecting Olfactory System Enabled by Ultra‐Fast and Sub‐ppm Ammonia‐Responsive Ti3C2Tx MXene/MoS2 Sensors

AbstractExplosive developments in modern society bring huge fire loads. Previous fire detections at early stages are basically enabled by recognizing abnormal high‐temperatures, smoke particles, and flame light signals. However, the identification of these characteristic signals is generally accompanied by an open flame or smoke, which makes it difficult to prevent further serious damage. Herein, a latent‐fire‐detecting strategy of trace ammonia (NH3) analysis based on nanohybrid Ti3C2Tx MXene/MoS2 is proposed. Benefiting from nanoscale high‐density Schottky heterojunctions between MoS2 and Ti3C2Tx MXene, ultrafast (3 s @100 ppm), sub‐ppm (200 ppb minimum), and high‐sensitivity (81.7% @100 ppm and 10.2% @200 ppb) detection of NH3 are enabled. An assembled latent‐fire‐detecting olfactory system (LFOS) based on MXene/MoS2 and interdigital electrodes can monitor trace NH3 releases from different materials (wool, leather, foam, and nylon) during thermal decomposition at latent stages. Notably, the LFOS can detect fire threats at least 84 s earlier than commercialized smoke detectors, providing more fire dealing time and an escape period; this offers a promising latent‐fire‐warning approach for eliminating fire treats at an early stage.

A Review on Battery Management System for Electric Vehicles

Abstract: Worldwide, development on the batteries used in electric vehicles is making significant strides in solving the problems of carbon emissions and climate change issues. The efficiency of electric vehicles depends on accurate testing of key parameters and proper operation and functionality of battery management system. On the other hand, inadequate battery energy storage system monitoring and safety measures can lead to serious problems such as battery overheating, overcharging, cell unbalancing, thermal management, and fire threats. An efficient battery management system, which includes chargingdischarging control, precise monitoring, temperature management, battery safety, and protection, is essential for enhancing battery performance in order to alleviate these worries. This study aims to give a comprehensive analysis of different intelligent techniques and control strategies for the battery management system in electric vehicle applications. The evaluation evaluates battery state estimate intelligent algorithms in terms of their features, structure, configuration, accuracy, advantages, and disadvantages. The paper also examines the numerous controllers employed in battery warming, cooling, balancing, and protection emphasizing sections, traits, objectives, results, benefits, and limitations.

Modeling evacuation and visitation proximity in museums using agent-based simulation

Museums are of special nature because of their dynamic environment and different audiences. These unique characteristics make evacuation process in cases of fire incidents and similar threats difficult to assess or predict. That is due to the interaction between artifacts and museum visitors who might be from different backgrounds. The visits themselves could also be dynamic, multivariable with sensitive experience. This paper presents an Agent-Based Simulation (ABS) framework that simulates the visitation and evacuation inside museums. The proposed framework enhances visitation management and assesses evacuation efficiency in museums during fire incidents or threats. Human characteristics of occupants such as age, gender, physical ability and familiarity to the surroundings are considered in the proposed ABS. The proposed framework analyses the proximity among occupants during visitations and simulates the decision-making process during evacuation. A meta-heuristic supervised machine learning approach is used by deploying fuzzy classification method to determine the relative weights of criteria that might affect the performance of visitation and evacuation. A case study for Tutankhamun gallery in the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is used to illustrate the practicality of the proposed model. The results from the case study shows that an average of 18 min is required for safe evacuation including pre-evacuation time. To examine the robustness of the proposed framework, sensitivity analysis was carried out to identify the factors that the model is most sensitive to. The number of exists and the certainty of diagnosis from occupants of the surrounding events are the factors that the model is highly sensitive to. The proposed framework can identify personal characteristics of occupants in the simulation environment, as well as social psychological dimensions that have an effect on decision-making while evacuating.

Expanding the Duty to Rescue to Climate Migration

Expanding the Duty to Rescue to Climate Migration

Wildfires cause rapid changes to estuarine benthic habitat

Estuaries are one of the most valuable biomes on earth. Although humans are highly dependent on these ecosystems, anthropogenic activities have impacted estuaries worldwide, altering their ecological functions and ability to provide a variety of important ecosystem services. Many anthropogenic stressors combine to affect the soft sedimentary habitats that dominate estuarine ecosystems. Now, due to climate change, estuaries and other marine areas might be increasingly exposed to the emerging threat of megafires. Here, by sampling estuaries before and after a megafire, we describe impacts of wildfires on estuarine benthic habitats and justify why megafires are a new and concerning threat to coastal ecosystems. We (1) show that wildfires change the fundamental characteristics of estuarine benthic habitat, (2) identify the factors (burnt intensity and proximity to water's edge) that influence the consequences of fires on estuaries, and (3) identify relevant indicators of wildfire impact: metals, nutrients, and pyrogenic carbon. We then discuss how fires can impact estuaries globally, regardless of local variability and differences in catchment. In the first empirical assessment of the impact of wildfires on estuarine condition, our results highlight indicators that may assist waterway managers to empirically detect wildfire impacts in estuaries and identify catchment factors that should be included in fire risk assessments for estuaries. Overall, this study highlights the importance of considering fire threats in current and future estuarine and coastal management.

Assessment Strategies of Fixed Firefighting system in Residential Multi-Story Building for Improving Fire Safety: A Review

A fixed firefighting system is a key component of fire safeguarding and reducing fire danger. It is installed as a permanent component in a structure to protect the entire or a portion of the building and its contents. The study aims to review the previous studies that deal with the evaluation of fire safety measures and their use in resolving problems associated with fire threats in buildings. For this reason, a number of previous studies in this field were reviewed compared with the NFPA code. The findings revealed that regulatory developments over the last several decades had created an atmosphere conducive to innovation. This has resulted in a growth in the number of fixed firefighting system types now obtainable. These solutions provide substantial distinction in terms of performance and hence safety. Not only is the availability of different fire risk alleviation systems important, but so is the election of the most convenient solution for the job. This is typically seen inside regulatory procedures and basics of thumb or heuristics and depends on the knowledge and expertise of divergent specialists. When several perceived danger and results thresholds are surpassed, fixed firefighting systems are frequently included as extra fire protection and resilience measures

Assessment of wildfire hazard on the territory of Kazakhstan using remote sensing data

Kazakhstan ranks 9th in terms of land area in the world, however, most of the territory is in the arid zone, which causes a high exposure to the wildfire risk. According to the Ministry of Emergency Situations, more than 14 thousand fires annually affect forest, steppe and rural areas, which is almost 78% of all fires in the country. This work is aimed at assessing the territory of Kazakhstan in terms of the degree of fire danger using methods and means of remote sensing, which is relevant today. The purpose of this work is to create a fire hazard forecast map that allows you to determine the degree of fire hazard of territories based on remote sensing satellite data. The works of foreign researchers who have direct experience in research and assessment of the degree of fire danger, based on the use of satellite information, are considered. To determine the likelihood of a fire risk, we studied the natural conditions and their impact on the possible spread of a fire, and evaluated 11 types of initial data in the Karaganda region. Based on the experience of the authors, the input data are arranged into the following groups: fuel, topography, climate, and fire statistics. Economic efficiency, and the significance of the results of this work, can serve to reduce socio-economic losses. Similarly, it is possible to significantly speed up the notification of local fire services, pre-evaluate the possible threat of various fires and reduce the time to eliminate them.

An integrated framework for managing fire resilience of metro station system: Identification, assessment, and optimization

As a sociotechnical infrastructure system constituting equipment and facilities, operational staff, and passengers, the metro station system (MSS) is under fire threat from varying causes. Although fires occupy a high portion of all hazards occurring in the MSS, how the MSS in operation can systematically cope with fires has drawn scant attention. To improve MSSs’ poor performance across the fire management cycle, the concept of fire resilience is proposed based on the system resilience theory. The disaster scene analysis, TOSE approach, and modified TOPSIS method are combined to identify fire resilience indexes. Then, a Bayesian network is developed to assess fire resilience and reveal critical causal chain in fire scenes. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis and dynamic Bayesian network with critical importance analysis are adopted to formulate optimization strategies for different periods of operating life. The resulting framework is applied to Nanjing MSS, providing operational staff and decision makers with practical tools to engage in long-term resilient operation of MSS against fires within a clear manageable scope. The results indicate passengers’ escape skills and safety behaviors, security screening operations, equipment inspection and maintenance, and rescue service access are the prime factors resulting in low fire resilience; meanwhile, economic resource allocation should be prioritized for optimization initially, but optimization priorities should be transferred to the less controllable passengers’ escape skills and aging firefighting equipment as operating life increases. The integration of identification, assessment, and optimization methods can also be flexibly embedded into various infrastructure systems’ operation management processes to optimize disaster resilience continuously.

Organization of the Activities of the Police Units in Case of an Emergency Caused by Forest Fires

The subject of the study of this article is public relations in the field of organization of activities and ensuring the safety of personnel of internal affairs bodies during the liquidation of the consequences of emergency situations. The object of the study is the formation and improvement of skills in the organization of management activities in the organization and conduct of work to eliminate the consequences of forest fires. The relevance of this work is related to improving the quality of professional training of police officers and the execution of the Decree of the President of Russia V. V. Putin "On combating forest fires", which sets the task for senior officials of the subjects of the Russian Federation to ensure a reduction in the area of forest fires in 2022-2030 by at least 50 percent relative to the level of 2021. The article analyzes the activities of the police units to ensure the safety of forests from fires. The issues of criminal responsibility for the commission of forest arson and the specifics of the disclosure of this type of crime are touched upon. The scientific novelty of the study is as follows: a) a detailed analysis of the activities of the Department of Internal Affairs to ensure the safety of forests from fires is carried out; b) the need to improve the training of police officers to identify forest fires at the initial stage is justified; c) the issues of tactics of preparing police units for emergency situations are highlighted. The main conclusions of the conducted research are the need to improve the tactics of preparation of police units for prevention and action in the event of a threat of forest fires. The given statistical data and the considered example of a forest fire trial indicate the importance of ongoing research in this area and the need to tighten criminal liability for the destruction of forests by arson.

Reaction to fire of polymethylmethacrylate and polyvinylchloride under reduced oxygen concentrations in a controlled-atmospherecone calorimeter

Electrical cable sheaths are the most abundant fire load in nuclear power plants, mainly in rooms that are kept in under slight pressure. This configuration leads fires to grow in under-ventilated and vitiated conditions. Assessing fire threat involves characterizing the heat released, responsible for fire growth, and the smoke evolved, which may interact with sensitive components in the area. For that purpose, a revisited controlled-atmosphere cone calorimeter has been designed, set up, and coupled to a Fourier transformed infrared spectrometer and an electrical low-pressure impactor to measure simultaneously the evolved gases and aerosols, respectively. This bench-scale apparatus has been first qualified with polymethylmethacrylate. It has second been used to characterize polyvinylchloride cable sheath representative material reaction to fire in under-ventilated and vitiated conditions. It appeared that vitiation in under-ventilated fires lowers the heat release rate and the fuel mass loss rate.

The hidden value of trees: Quantifying the ecosystem services of tree lineages and their major threats across the contiguous US

Trees provide critical contributions to human well-being. They sequester and store greenhouse gasses, filter air pollutants, provide wood, food, and other products, among other benefits. These benefits are threatened by climate change, fires, pests and pathogens. To quantify the current value of the flow of ecosystem services from U.S. trees, and the threats they face, we combine macroevolutionary and economic valuation approaches using spatially explicit data about tree species and lineages. We find that the value of five key ecosystem services with adequate data generated by US trees is $114 billion per annum (low: $85 B; high: $137 B; 2010 USD). The non-market value of trees from carbon storage and air pollution removal far exceed their commercial value from wood products and food crops. Two lineages—pines and oaks—account for 42% of the value of these services. The majority of species face threats from climate change, many face increasing fire risk, and known pests and pathogens threaten 40% of total woody biomass. The most valuable US tree species and lineages are among those most threatened by known pests and pathogens, with species most valuable for carbon storage most at risk from increasing fire threat. High turnover of tree species across the continent results in a diverse set of species distributed across the tree of life contributing to ecosystem services in the U.S. The high diversity of taxa across U.S. forests may be important in buffering ecosystem service losses if and when the most valuable lineages are compromised.

Centralized fire locator system through iot-based fire alarm system in selected barangay in taguig city


 
 
 This project aimed to develop a system that would easily locate the area of a fire in selected barangay Taguig City. The system allows the fire authorities to monitor the real-time status of a fire alarm and will be informed once the sensor devices modify a threat of fire. The system will also provide the information and location needed by the fire authorities to contact the owner of the house and prepare for a quick rescue. Early discovery of a fire may lead to the saving of many lives and properties. The researchers utilized a design method to identify the processes that were used during the project's development in this study. In addition, an ISO 25010 model was applied in this study to help participants in investigating and evaluating the developed system.In this study, the researcher conducted a survey in the form of a questionnaire, which was distributed to the target respondents by personal interaction. In order to develop the Centralized Fire Locator System through IOT-Based Fire Alarm System in Selected Barangay in Taguig City, the researcher used a model Agile methodology in the development of the project.The survey questions focused on the functionality of the created project, such as emergency notification, which is important in the making of this project. The target respondents had a positive interpretation of the system’s efficiency and effectiveness. The three groups, including the IT practitioner, mostly responded with "Very Satisfactory" and "Excellent," indicating that they agreed on functionality, performance, usability, portability, and maintainability as outlined in the checklist instrument.
 
 

Centralized fire locator system through iot-based fire alarm system in selected barangay in taguig city

This project aimed to develop a system that would easily locate the area of a fire in selected barangay Taguig City. The system allows the fire authorities to monitor the real-time status of a fire alarm and will be informed once the sensor devices modify a threat of fire. The system will also provide the information and location needed by the fire authorities to contact the owner of the house and prepare for a quick rescue. Early discovery of a fire may lead to the saving of many lives and properties. The researchers utilized a design method to identify the processes that were used during the project's development in this study. In addition, an ISO 25010 model was applied in this study to help participants in investigating and evaluating the developed system.In this study, the researcher conducted a survey in the form of a questionnaire, which was distributed to the target respondents by personal interaction. In order to develop the Centralized Fire Locator System through IOT-Based Fire Alarm System in Selected Barangay in Taguig City, the researcher used a model Agile methodology in the development of the project.The survey questions focused on the functionality of the created project, such as emergency notification, which is important in the making of this project. The target respondents had a positive interpretation of the system’s efficiency and effectiveness. The three groups, including the IT practitioner, mostly responded with "Very Satisfactory" and "Excellent," indicating that they agreed on functionality, performance, usability, portability, and maintainability as outlined in the checklist instrument.

Hygienic and environmental problems of oil and gas production on the offshore shelf

The article discusses the results of research carried out within the framework of the industry program of Rospotrebnadzor “Hygienic scientific justification for minimizing risks to the health of the population of Russia” for 2016–2020 (p. 2. 16). During the development of oil and gas fields of the shelf in the waters of the Northern, etc. In addition to climatic conditions, dangerous and harmful factors of the production environment have a significant impact on working conditions: intense industrial noise, general and local vibration, insufficient lighting, contamination of the working area with dangerous chemicals and gases. Often, oil and gas in wells are under high pressure, which creates a threat of explosive emissions and fires. Among the unfavorable factors, the leading place is also occupied by noise, which affects workers during the entire shift from 7 to 30 or more days continuously. The noise sources are power plants and working mechanisms. Sound pressure levels in workplaces reach 72–107 dBA, in cabins 52–67 dBA. The equivalent daily sound levels are 71–102 dBA, and the total doses of acoustic energy affecting personnel exceed the permissible requirements by tens of times. In order to ensure the implementation of industrial and environmental control during the development of oil and gas fields on the offshore shelf, the main parameters, sources and mechanisms of marine water pollution have been determined. The sanitary and hygienic characteristics of the quality of sea water, ways and mechanisms of monitoring the state of sea waters are given. The analysis and updating of a number of existing regulatory and methodological documents in the field of ensuring the sanitary and epidemiological well-being of the population and the safety of environmental objects, including the draft SanPiN 2.2.3... “Sanitary rules and regulations for drilling rigs and structures used in the development of offshore hydrocarbon deposits” has been prepared.

Global Trends of Forest Loss Due to Fire From 2001 to 2019

Forest fires contribute to global greenhouse gas emissions and can negatively affect public health, economic activity, and provision of ecosystem services. In boreal forests, fires are a part of the ecosystem dynamics, while in the humid tropics, fires are largely human-induced and lead to forest degradation. Studies have shown changing fire dynamics across the globe due to both climate and land use change. However, global trends in fire-related forest loss remain uncertain due to the lack of a globally consistent methodology applied to high spatial resolution data. Here, we create the first global 30-m resolution satellite-based map of annual forest loss due to fire. When producing this map, we match the mapped area of forest loss due to fire to the reference area obtained using a sample-based unbiased estimator, thus enabling map-based area reporting and trend analysis. We find an increasing global trend in forest loss due to fire from 2001 to 2019, driven by near-uniform increases across the tropics, subtropical, and temperate Australia, and boreal Eurasia. The results quantify the increasing threat of fires to remaining forests globally and may improve modeling of future forest fire loss rates under various climate change and development scenarios.

Q-rough sets, flicker modeling and unsupervised fire threat quantification from videos

This article defines new methods for unsupervised fire region segmentation and fire threat detection from the RGB video stream. Here, an unsupervised approach has been developed to determine the threat associated with fire. With this method, the threat of fire can be quantified, and accordingly, an alarm can be generated in automated surveillance systems of indoor as well as outdoors. To overcome the requirement of any manual intervention/ labeled data, or to deal with the incomplete knowledge-base due to the absence of any prior information, rough approximations have been used here to approximate the fire region. A new concept, namely, Q- rough set, has been proposed here, where the inexactness of the rough approximation is being minimized by employing a Q-agents of reinforcement learning. Utility maximization of Q-learning has been used to minimize ambiguities in the rough approximations. The newly developed Q-rough set approximation has been applied then for fire region segmentation from video frames. Another challenge associated with fire threat measures is not getting misled by other fire-like regions, even when the true fire is not present in the scene. Here, a new method of classifying true fire flame to fire-like regions is developed by incorporating the unique fluctuating feature of fire flame and modeling it with a flicker identification model. The threat index of true fire flame over the input video stream has been defined in sync with the relative growth in the fire segments on the recent frames. All theories and indices defined here have been experimentally validated with different types of fire and non-fire videos, through demonstrations and comparisons, as superior to the state-of-the-art methods.

GIS application in analysis of threat of forest fires and landslides in the Svrljiski Timok basin (Serbia)

Forest fires and landslides represent very frequent natural disasters in Serbia. The Svrljiski Timok river basin is located in the southeastern part of the Republic of Serbia, and according to natural characteristics it represents a significant area for geohazard study. The task of the research is to analyse natural and anthropogenic condition by determining locations which are susceptible to forest fires and landslides in order to protect the population and infrastructure. Using Geographic Informational Systems (GIS) and available data, their processing was started for the susceptibility of the terrain to forest fires using the RC index. For the analysis of the territory occurrence of landslides the statistical Probability method (PM) and Landslide Susceptibility Index (LSI) were used. The obtained results indicate that 20.81% of the area of the Svrljiski Timok basin has a very high susceptibility to forest fires, while 29.21% of the terrain is highly susceptible to landslides. The results gained processing the RC index can be applied to adequate risk management of forest fires, improvement of monitoring and early warning systems in the study area. Sustainable management of agricultural land and improvement of environmental protection can be implemented on the basis of the obtained results for the most endangered areas of landslides.

Музична індустрія України за часів війни

The music industry consists of a number of components - the production of new products, their circulation in the media and the implementation of concert activities. Usually the process of producing musical products went through such stages as writing compositions, creating arrangements for them, performing at concerts and finally recording songs in studios. Subsequently, there was a tour, which could increase the ability to effectively implement the already finished musical product. As a result of the military events taking place in Ukraine, the modern domestic music industry, in which various forms of musical production and performing activities were presented, is currently in a state of significant transformational changes. As a result of active hostilities on the Ukrainian territory, there was a need to find new formats of implementation, first of all, concert activities. The representatives of Ukrainian show business have developed new strategies for promoting their performance. Firstly, the practice of holding concert events abroad with the participation of Ukrainian performers has spread. Events combining offline and online performances have also been introduced. There has been a practice of using such locations as the subway for concert activities, which, due to its characteristics, has an increased level of security in the event of the threat of artillery fire and missile strikes. Spontaneous open-air concerts, organized for charitable purposes, have also spread. The release of musical products continues, but the content of the musical content has acquired a more patriotic-tinged character and taken high positions in the charts, ratings, etc. The author states that some compositions have acquired the meaning of peculiar symbols of the struggle of the Ukrainian people for their independence. Their numerous performance versions, in which Ukrainian and Western musicians took part, have acquired the status of "viral". This was facilitated by the creative collaborations of foreign performers with Ukrainian musicians. The goal of creative cooperation was to show support for the Ukrainian people, express it in musical form. Such actions are extremely important, and various musicians have demonstrated solidarity with the Ukrainians. All these factors have a fleeting effect on the increase of interest in the Ukrainian cultural product, support of the music industry. At the same time, they perform the role of psychological support. Key words: music industry, music product, concert, rating, war, Ukraine.

Residual Current Detection Prototype and Simulation Method in Low Voltage DC System

With the rapid development of dc system, the residual current in dc system has become an urgent problem to be solved. However, the type B residual current devices (RCD) for ac systems could not be directly used in dc systems. In the dc system, the voltage fluctuation generated by the rectifier and the system circulating net currents generated by the line with different positive and negative parameters would interfere with the detection of RCD. In this paper, the residual current experimental platform was built firstly. Then the residual current detection prototype was developed and its operating characteristics were tested. The impedance model of human body was built for different electric shock conditions secondly. Thirdly, the influence of system factors on circulating net currents and the detection of residual current was analyzed. Finally, the configurations of RCD in dc system were proposed finally, protecting human body from electric shock and preventing electric fire accident threats.