A Method for the Application of Numerical Simulations during Firefighting Operations Using Pre-Simulated, Model-Based Fire Scenarios

Abstract

The spread of fire and smoke during a fire incidentplays a crucial role in rescuing people from the burning building. So it isimportant for the decision makers (the head of rescue staff) to get aprediction about the spread of fire inside the building through computationaltechniques like numerical fire simulations. But these techniques requireadvanced mathematical knowledge and are very time consuming. This paperpresents a new method which employs a set of pre-simulated andmodel-based scenarios to find the closest one to the real fire and present itsresults to the decision makers. For this purpose, we shift the performanceconsuming numerical fire simulations into a former phase by integration ofthese simulations into the planning process of the building. This is realizedby enhancing the methods of Building Information Modeling(BIM). To provide the fire simulation results during a real case, our newconcept includes a scenario database where all simulated fire scenarios willbe collected. In a real case, a special search algorithm will go through thisdatabase to find the closest pre-simulated fire scenario to the real fire onthe basis of reported information from the burning building.