UPM researchers have developed a new method of fire risk assessment that evaluates the safety of complex projects based on performance.
Under the Technical Building Code (CTE) and within the activities of “Lafarge Cementos Security Chair“Of ETSI IndustrialesResearchers from the UPM have developed a method of risk assessment in case of fire (MEREDICTE) to quantify and compare the potential hazard and the level of protection, obtaining the level of risk in case of fire in a building.
A major difficulty in developing this method has been the complexity of all the parameters that affect the fire safety of a building. The percentages and ratios of the formulation and weights of primary and secondary parameters have been allocated based on actual fire statistics, the requirements of the CTE and the opinion of experts, and have been verified through mathematical analysis and application awareness of thirty representative case studies.
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A recent study at Oregon State University indicates that some previous estimates of the impacts of forest fires have overestimated the number of live trees made by fire, and the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere as a result.
The investigation was carried out in the Metolius River Basin, where about one third (100,000 acres) of area burned in four major fires in 2002-03. Although some previous studies assumed that 30 percent of the mass of living trees was consumed during the forest fires in the new study has concluded that only 1 to 3 percent was consumed by flames .
Some estimates made at that time suggested that one of the four fires which occurred in 2003, released a 600 per cent more carbon emissions that any consumption of fossil fuel energy and that year in the state of Oregon. But in this new study has concluded that the four fires combined produced only about 2.5 percent of annual carbon emissions in that state.
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