The number, authenticity, and quality of European historic buildings are being steadily eroded through the effects of fire in addition to associated levels of life loss. The intention of the Action is to address the significant physical and cultural loss of Europe's built heritage to the damaging effects of fire. This will be achieved in a multi-disciplinary, multi-national manner through the collaboration and integration of a variety of related projects. The Action will also build upon current research initiatives and recently published material. The outcomes will be the promotion of data, methodologies, and management systems. This will assist a wide range of end-users balance fire engineering needs with conservation requirements in the future preservation of the European patrimony. Mr. Ingval Maxwell, Director TCRE, Historic Scotland, has initiated and chairs this COST Action. The Action will consider the: - Vulnerability of historic buildings to fire - Risk assessment methodologies - Protection of fabric and content - Prevention of fire and fire spread - Detection and suppression requirements - Training and management of staff - Insurance considerations Working Group Activities 1 Data, Loss Statistics, and Evaluating Risks -Data and Fabric analysis -Qualitative Risk analysis 2 Available and Developing Technology - Available technology (Fabric and materials) - State-of-the-art solutions (Computer simulations for risk assessment and fire protection technology, Computational Fluid Dynamics, CFD) 3 Cultural and Financial Value - Financial data and risk - Loss recovery 4 Property Management Strategies - Support for property managers - Staff training Total number of Signatories 19:Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Republic of Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom. Switzerland contributes to the activities of the Working Group WG-2 'Available and Developing Technology.' A first area of interest is mainly objective-oriented and aims at several practical issues, such as optimizing fire detection methods and developing fire-fighting strategies. The final objective is to protect human health and life, to conserve cultural heritage and to prevent material loss in general.The second area of interest is method-oriented and aims at the development or improvement of the different scientific (engineering and physics) tools, which are required for the realization and execution of the above-mentioned tasks. The Swiss project partners: - Air & Climate, Institut für Hochbautechnik, D-ARCH, ETHZ Dr. Alfred Moser - Institut für Fluiddynamik, D-MAVT, ETHZ Prof. Thomas Roesgen - Air Flow Consulting AG, Zurich Dr. Alois Schälin The COST Action C17 URL is:
http://www.heritagefire.org/ Information: Swiss Coordinator, Alfred Moser,
moser@hbt.arch.ethz.ch, 044-632 36 41.
