Fire Protection Engineering (also known as fire engineering or fire safety engineering) is the application of science and engineering principles to protect people and their environments from the destructive effects of fire and smoke.
The discipline of fire protection engineering includes, but is not exclusive to:
- Active fire protection - fire suppression systems, and fire alarm.
- Passive fire protection - fire and smoke barriers, space separation
- Smoke control and management
- Escape facilities- Emergency exits, Fire lifts etc.
- Building design, layout, and space planning
- Fire prevention programs
- Fire dynamics and fire modeling
- Human behavior during fire events
- Risk analysis, including economic factors
- Wildfire Management
Fire protection engineers identify risks and design safeguards that aid in preventing, controlling, and mitigating the effects of fires. Fire protection engineers assist architects, building owners and developers in evaluating buildings' life safety and property protection goals. FPEs are also employed as fire investigators, including such very large-scale cases as the analysis of the collapse of the World Trade Centers. NASA uses fire protection engineers in its space program to help improve safety. Fire protection engineers are also employed to provide 3rd party review for performance based fire engineering solutions submitted in support of local building regulation applications.
Read more about Fire Protection Engineering: History, Education, Professional Registration
Famous quotes containing the words fire, protection and/or engineering:
“You can much sooner dry you by such a fire as you can make in the woods than in anybody’s kitchen, the fireplace is so much larger, and wood so much more abundant.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a privileged class among the laborers and save the lawless among their number from a most needful remedy available to all men for the protection of their business interests against unlawful invasion.... The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny, and ought not to be made legitimate.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Mining today is an affair of mathematics, of finance, of the latest in engineering skill. Cautious men behind polished desks in San Francisco figure out in advance the amount of metal to a cubic yard, the number of yards washed a day, the cost of each operation. They have no need of grubstakes.”
—Merle Colby, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)