Search

ABSTRACT California faces increasing wildfire frequency and severity, necessitating effective firefighting strategies along with well‐located infrastructure. Hydrants are vital for urban safety and must comply with established standards to adequately protect people and property. One such standard involves hydrant spacing, critical for ensuring effective emergency response in the event of a fire. Traditional geographic information systems techniques are not well suited to fully assess hydrant networks, especially in the context of spacing given complex road network geographies. This paper introduces an innovative approach to assess hydrant spacing. The developed technique is applied in the evaluation of infrastructure in Santa Barbara, California. The results reveal significant code violations along streets throughout the region, suggesting clustered pockets of vulnerability and risk. Potential strategies emerge from this analysis to enhance firefighting preparedness, offering guidance to local agencies regarding hydrant system limitations across this fire‐prone region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, fires on heavy vehicles and trucks still represent a severe threat to environment and people safety, with serious consequences and injuries. In this context, fire losses can be minimized by preventing the rapid onset of fire and allowing drivers and occupants to escape safely by implementing an effective fire monitoring and extinguishing system. Commercially available fire extinguishing systems have shown multiple lacks concerning the structural implementation of the system only on specific types of heavy vehicles, the monitoring of system parameters, and the environmental toxicity of the extinguishing agents employed. Therefore, the present article proposes the early design and development of a novel integrated fire monitoring and extinguishing system for trucks and heavy vehicles called 'T-Fire System'. The proposed solution can operate in any environment (confined and not) through a close interconnection between the onboard diagnostic sensors and the plug and play fire extinguishing system which employs environmentally sustainable fluorine-free extinguishing agent. The development of the T-Fire System has started from a patented prototype, and preliminary evaluations of both the monitoring and the fire extinguishing system have shown promptness and reliability. Further research will be focused on improving and customising the solution for the pre-industrialization phase of the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire safety is one of the major concerns in the public transport and thus passenger trains in the UK seek continuous improvement in passenger safety and comfort. In order to combat fire, there is a legal requirement in most countries across the global to install a fire suppression system within passenger railroad cars. In the event of fire, the thermal sensors trigger high pressure flow of hydrant through nozzles into the railroad car, thus supressing the fire. The efficient design of fire suppression system is highly dependent on the operational parameters of the system. The published literature, although abundant in investigating the flow characteristics through nozzles, severely lacks in conjugating this with fire suppression. Thus, in the present study, extensive parametric investigations have been carried out on the operational and design parameters of a conventional fire suppression system using an integrated approach i.e., hydrant flow and combustion. Advanced numerical techniques have been employed to evaluate the hydrodynamic characteristics of the fire suppression system based on the size of droplets of the hydrant from exiting the nozzles and the flow rate of the hydrant. The effects of these parameters on the temperature and the concentration of soot particles within the passenger railroad car have been evaluated. The results show that smaller sized hydrant droplets (250um) are more effective in supressing the fire in enclosures compared to larger droplets (750um), while higher flow rates tend to supress the fire more efficiently. It is envisaged that the results obtained in the present study will help in developing more efficient fire suppression systems for passenger railroad cars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real-time control of water distribution networks for firefighting is an important but little-studied problem. Water utilities in England and Wales reduce hydraulic pressure to a minimum regulatory threshold in order to reduce leakage and avoid financial penalties. However, utilities are not legally bound to guarantee specific flow rates from fire hydrants, which poses a risk for firefighting. This study presents an adaptive nonlinear model predictive control scheme for water distribution networks integrating two modes of control: (1) normal control, when a network operates under normal conditions and the objective is to minimize energy costs and average zonal pressure, and (2) fire control, when fire flows need to be delivered from hydrants without exceeding maximum pressure and customer demand is maintained to the best extent possible. The proposed scheme is applied to an operational network. It demonstrates the combined benefits of reducing costs and leakage with increased fire flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cable bridges such as cable-stayed bridges and suspension bridges are supported by members such as cables, reinforced girders, and pylons. Fires on the bridge can cause structural degradation in members, which can pose a severe danger to the bridge. However, in most countermeasure standards for structures, no information regarding the installation of firefighting facilities on cable bridges is available. In this paper, a fire risk assessment method for the installation of fire hydrants and standpipe systems on cable bridges is proposed. To determine the grade of the fire hazards for these bridges, the fire risk was classified into categories, such as the likelihood of fire occurrence, fire response conditions, the vulnerability of the bridge to fire, and impact of fire on the society and economy. The degree of fire hazard was determined by assigning weightage factors to each category, and the fire risk for 70 existing cable bridges and those under construction in Korea was evaluated. Application of these results can ensure adequate fire extinguishing facilities are installed on any bridge based on its fire risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the proper use of fire hydrants. It states that potable water is usually used for firefighting as fire hydrants are connected to water mains. It mentions some hydrant-use policies including the permits which contain educational materials or training requirements, restricted access to a finite number of fire hydrants connected around the system, and fines imposed for unauthorized or improper hydrant use.