IS-Fires

Centre for Fire and Hazards Sciences

IS-Fires project aims to enhance prevention and preparedness during informal settlement fires.

This project aims to address a very complex, largely neglected problem affecting low/low-middle socio-demographic index countries. Scale model fire experiments, and semi-probabilistic computational analysis will be used to develop a robust fire spread model to enhance communities’ safety and resilience.

This project’s ambition is to understand and develop insight into IS fires by assessing complex factors such as dwellings distance, ventilation, and waste accumulation, to understand physical mechanisms of IS fire spread and fill research gaps.

Globally, over a billion people live in informal settlements (IS) and this number is expected to rapidly grow. Given typically dense and highly combustible nature of these dwellings, largescale destructive IS fires occur daily with catastrophic consequences that include injuries, fatalities, loss of property and livelihood disruption. This is a pressing challenge, as identified by LRF, regarding safety of physical infrastructure and public understanding of risk.

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Academic expertise

Eleni Asimakopoulou
Dr Eleni Asimakopoulou
Lecturer in Fire Engineering
School of Engineering and Computing

Eleni joined us as a Lecturer in Fire Engineering in 2020. Eleni’s research plays a crucial role in acknowledging the immense scale of fire-related issues, which are geographically widespread. She actively engages in various research areas, striving to address the global fire pro…

clliyanage
Professor Champika Liyanage
Professor in Facilities Management
School of Engineering and Computing

Champika started her journey with us in 2008 as a lecturer. She was able to progress through different roles here as a senior lecturer and reader to a Professor. This makes her the first female professor in our School of Engineering. She carries out many key roles here and in the…

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