NFPA Journal - Spring 2022 - 43

efforts aimed at developing best practices
for the operations and handling of
new-generation firefighting foam, work
that provides an important input into
a broader effort to improve the longterm
health and safety of emergency
responders.
The future promises an array of
complex technical challenges for us to
address, many of them driven by social
and demographic changes on a global
scale. A recent NFPA Journal article,
" Ultra Urban " (nfpa.org/ultraurban),
highlighted the need to consider the
movement of large populations to cities
in low- and middle-income countries in
the decades to come. Based on numbers
from the United Nations, 55 percent of
the world's population lived in urban
areas in 2018, a figure projected to grow
to 68 percent by 2050. This equates to
2.5 billion people being added to the
world's cities, with an estimated 90
percent of that growth occurring in the
urban areas of Africa and Asia. What
all of this means is that, among other
things, a vast amount of new construction
will need to be undertaken for these
populations to live and work in, and
it will need to be done safely and efficiently-processes
that can be informed
by contributions from the global
research community.
Now is the time for that global community
to work together to have safety
recognized as a critical need for this
new built environment. That effort faces
a number of significant challenges,
including poverty. Resources in many
developing nations can be desperately
scarce, and when basic needs such as
shelter and food are difficult to come
by for large segments of the population,
concerns like fire safety in buildings
are simply not on the radar. It's that
condition that results in impoverished
populations bearing the bulk of the
world's fire burden; according to the
World Bank, an estimated 180,000 fire
deaths occur worldwide each year, and
95 percent of those deaths occur in lowand
middle-income countries. That's
why an important part of my work going
forward will be to help the Foundation
map out a more effective way to scale its
existing research portfolio, along with
new research efforts, to address these
specific issues in developing nations and
to conduct them in a sustainable way. It
may not be realistic to expect many of
these nations to utilize the latest safety
technologies or practices, but numerous
opportunities remain to reduce the
risk of fire faced by these vulnerable
populations.
THE FOUNDATION WILL
NEED TO EVOLVE TO
CONTINUE TO PRODUCE
IMPACTFUL AND
RELEVANT RESEARCH
IN AN EVER-CHANGING
WORLD. WE WILL
SEEK TO WORK WITH
NEW PARTNERS
GLOBALLY AND FROM
OTHER INDUSTRIES,
AS SPONSORS,
RESEARCHERS,
AND SUBJECTMATTER
EXPERTS.
Extending over many of these issues is
the impact of climate change, a multifaceted
challenge that directly or indirectly
will require significant research
resources in the future. In the built environment,
for example, efforts to create
structures that we consider " sustainable "
have resulted in the emergence of
significant safety hazards. Consider the
use of insulated exterior wall assemblies,
applied to buildings around the world
to help improve their energy efficiency.
The improper application of these
assemblies, with their highly combustible
layers of foam insulation, have led to
many large fires around the world, notably
the Grenfell Tower fire in London in
2017. The fire began inside the 24-story
apartment building, moved to the outside
of the structure, then raced up and
around the entire tower, fueled by the
combustible cladding and insulation of
the exterior wall assemblies. The fire
killed 72 people and injured scores.
As Grenfell graphically illustrated, fire
safety should be a major component of
a holistic approach to building design.
A 2020 Foundation report, " Fire Safety
Challenges of Green Buildings and Attributes, "
found that while there have been
fire safety advancements in the sustainable
attributes in buildings, much
work remains to be done, including the
improvement of assessment tools and
a more aggressive transition to holistic
approaches for regulation and design of
such buildings. There is also work to be
done to make test methods more robust
to consider the overall system approach.
Climate change is also a critical
factor in the increased prevalence of
wildfire around the world, specifically
the impact of fires in the wildland/
urban interface, or WUI. " Preparing for
Disaster: Workshop on Advancing WUI
Resilience, " a Foundation event held in
early 2020, outlined several research
needs to address the challenges associated
with WUI fires. These included
prioritizing evacuation and notification
in research activities, standardizing
quantification and visualization of risk,
improving test methods for construction
materials and assemblies, modeling fires
from wildland to buildings, understanding
the impact of wildfire smoke on
public health, improving data collection
efforts, and improving WUI research
infrastructure in the US. As that list suggests,
this is a heavy lift that will require
the collaboration of many different
groups, including the Foundation, working
together to meet these needs.
As we have always done, the Foundation
will leverage its partnerships to
help answer many of these questions
in the years to come. Our partners are
our biggest strength, and we would
not have had the impact that we've
had over the past four decades without
them. As those partnerships evolve, and
as we develop new collaborations with
partners around the world, the aim of
the Foundation will be the same as it
was on day one: to conduct research
that helps reduce risk for as many
people as possible.
AMANDA KIMBALL is executive director of the
Fire Protection Research Foundation.
NFPA .ORG/JOURNAL * NFPA JOURNAL | 43
http://www.nfpa.org/ultraurban http://nfpa.org/journal
NFPA Journal - Spring 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - Spring 2022
