BACKGROUND Every year, Europeans are surprised by some major catastrophic fires in buildings, such as the Grenfell Tower and Notre Dame fires. Lately, more common are fires caused due to modern lifestyles, e.g. on waste disposal sites, batteries for electric vehicles, etc. While the general public is focused on intervention response, Fire Experts are looking for the causes of these fires and how to prevent them from recurring. Analysis of major fires which are causing huge economic, environmental and cultural damage, indicates that response of industry and fire safety community to new fire risks is too slow. The exchange of knowledge on an impact of new products & services and research results on fire safety related issues among Fire Experts seems insufficient. Fire Experts are not just the Fire Engineers, involved in design of new buildings, but also all the other experts working on fire safety during entire life-time of buildings, such as architects, civil, mechanical, electrical and other engineers, working in design firms, people from construction and other industries, responsible jurisdictions, fire departments, etc. The access to this broad community of Fire Experts lies in the hands of Lecturers & Trainers at Universities, Fire Protection Associations and other VET providers of fire safety knowledge. They can present the meeting point of fresh incoming information, process it with their knowledge in a non-commercial way and distribute it among Fire Experts. Remark: the estimation is that there are several hundred Lecturers & Trainers in each participating country, and at least ten times more of engineers and others, working as so called fire experts. The problem is that the definition of fire expert is not the same in different countries. Since "Two heads are better than one", the respond of fire safety community to new fire threats should be based on data from as wide information base as possible, include all available human resources of VET providers and provide means for suitable process and flow of knowledge and solutions. OBJECTIVES In this context, in order to respond the need of properly processed and fast flow of information on new fire safety challenges, needed for better and faster response of Fire Experts, the objective of this project is to develop a tool for Lecturers & Trainers of Fire Experts: Online Learning Platform for Fire Expert Trainers (The Platform) on designing the fire safety of buildings based on state-of-the-art knowledge. Important goal of the project is to establish ongoing connection between the online platform and VET providers which usually have at disposal to latest knowledge. ACTIVITIES, METHODOLOGY, PARTICIPANTS AND RESULTS The Platform will be managed by logged-in Lecturers & Trainers from different countries, but accessible to all people, available in English, and, in long-term, depending on activities of users, in national languages. It will provide state-of-art knowledge about outcomes on new approaches from different fields of fire safety, i.e.: Risk Assessment / Prevention of fire spread to adjacent buildings, taking into account new products for facades / Fire resistance of structures and spread of fire inside the building including new products for linings, use of wood, etc. / Evacuation including people with disabilities / Fire detection and alarm systems / Smoke control / Automatic fire extinguishing systems / Arrangements for firefighters: water supply and access of emergency vehicles, at landfills. Training courses for each field will be prepared by carefully selected experts with relevant knowledge coming from universities, fire associations or companies from three EU countries, with a total of six partners. The Platform will include an online training course for logged-in Lecturers & Trainers of Fire Experts, and a toolkit (set of tools, procedures, and supporting materials) for effective response to new challenges. In order to assess how effective is the Platform and all it’s tools in improving of competences, it will be tested with Lecturers, Trainers and Fire Experts from three EU countries. The Lecturers & Trainers will put in practice what they have learnt by carrying out some courses with Fire Experts. Using the results from the testing, the partners will define the necessary improvements to ensure that the Platform delivers the target outcomes. LONG TERM BENEFIT The project will be implemented by a transnational and transectorial partnership involving organisations from VET providers, HE Institutions and Fire Prevention Associations from partner countries. Beyond the partners, the Platform have the potential to be exploited by a wide range of organisations and individuals because it will be published as an OER (Open Educational Resource) under the Creative Commons license “Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)", thus allowing anyone to freely use all the content as as well as to modify it and build upon.
We wanted to achieve the exchange of the latest knowledge and information on the emerging challenges of fire protection for fire experts (including lecturers, researchers, scientists, engineers from different field, people from fire safety industry etc.) from participating and other countries, but also to provide the useful education materials in different forms to lecturers, especially for those who lack the latest information in very broad area of fire protection (e.g. recent fires, firefighters interventions, news on the market of products for fire safety, new approaches at planning fire safety in buildings, etc.). Very important was the idea of international sharing of best practice in approaches of education in very specific and complex area as it is fire safety.
This project meet several needs. First, to respond to the need for properly processed and fast flow of information on new fire safety challenges, like increased number of fires (due to modern lifestyles, batteries etc.), growing percentage of population with disabilities, etc., a tool for Lecturers & Trainers of Fire Experts, and for Fire Experts themselves have to be developed. This tool provide state-of-the-art answers in an environment they can rely on and the latest knowledge on fire safety issues. On the other hand, there is a need for a faster and connected flow of information between the different engineering sectors involved in fire safety but also between academic/research institutions and professionals to put more emphasis on the effective and supportive development of new fire safety experts skilled to meet the needs of practice. In addition, in relatively small countries such as the partner countries, with a shorter tradition of education and training of fire experts than in Northern Europe, connections and knowledge sharing are even more important. Some of the partners are national representatives of EU Fire Protection Associations (CFPA-E), who meet regularly to discuss the latest issues at the European level.