NFPA Journal - Summer 2022 - 100

Safety Ecosystem
HELPING HAND Firefighters assist with
a rescue during an apartment fire in the
Bronx that killed 17 people in January.
Understanding the relationships between
the components of a safety ecosystem
and where weaknesses might exist can
help communities avoid such catastrophic
losses of life and property. GETTY IMAGES
life safety supports, the questions cover
a wide array of safety functions and do
require knowledge of the community's
existing safety practices. For instance,
the tool asks not only whether building,
electrical, and fire and life safety
codes are in force, but also whether any
provisions of those codes were altered-
namely, reduced or weakened-before
the code was put into effect. Therefore,
the people best suited to complete
the assessment are those in fire and
life safety and adjacent fields, such as
members of the fire service, design professionals,
skilled tradespeople, or those
with policy expertise in these areas.
So far, more than 100 assessments
have been conducted, spanning communities
in both of the Americas,
throughout Asia, in Africa, and the
Caribbean. More than half of the results
report ecosystem capacities in the
good-to-excellent range. Drilling down,
though, the question that assessment
takers most commonly answered with
a " no " (about 44 percent) asks whether
the community's government provides
sufficient funding for fire prevention
and community risk reduction activities.
A similar number of communities
100 | NFPA JOURNAL * SUMMER 2022
reported not having enough appropriately
trained fire safety inspectors.
Nearly half have codes in place that
have been weakened by the removal
of requirements. And while nearly all
users have reported that zoning is in
practice in their communities, only
CONFERENCE
SESSIONS
The Value of Codes and
Standards and the Fire and Life
Safety Ecosystem
Monday, June 6, 9:15-10:15 am
Brian Brauer, University of Illinois;
Ken Willette, NAFTD
Examining The Great Boston Fire
of 1872 Through the Lens of the
NFPA Safety Ecosystem
Tuesday, June 7, 10:30-11:30 a.m.
Stephanie Schorow, author;
Meghan Housewright, NFPA
The 2020 Beirut Explosion:
Lessons Learned from an
Ecosystem Failure
Tuesday, June 7, 2-3 p.m.
Sawsan Dahham,
Dar Al-Handasah
around 60 percent had additional code
requirements in place to mitigate the
risk posed by natural hazards such as
earthquakes and wildfire.
The assessment tool is off to a good
start, but more users-and more data-
will provide more thorough insights
into the most common safety weaknesses
found around the world. We
invite users to provide feedback directly
in the tool, or by contacting the NFPA
Fire & Life Safety Policy Institute at
mhousewright@nfpa.og.
The assessment tool is just the first
round of our plan to develop methods
of assessing the health of community
safety support systems; there is room
to grow in our ability to analyze the
reasons ecosystem components degrade
and fail. With emerging life safety challenges
all around us, from worsening
wildfires to fast-paced urban growth,
continuing to expand these capabilities
will help us better define and address
gaps in the fire and life safety ecosystem
and create a more robust and
resilient safety culture.
MEGHAN HOUSEWRIGHT is director of the NFPA
Fire & Life Safety Policy Institute in Washington, DC.
NFPA Journal - Summer 2022

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