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Lacustrine environments are considered favorable locations for Neolithic settlements, constituting a reliable year‐round water resource, which contributes to fertile arable land, rich biodiversity, and natural protection. Living by the wetlands, however, is characterized by intensive ecological vulnerabilities, that is, floods and fire events. These recurrent episodes are difficult to trace in the occupation layers since natural processes combined with human activities can form variable mixed microenvironments. Consequently, the direct impact of these events on the biography of the settlement and the decision‐making of its inhabitants is understudied. This paper presents a high‐resolution, microstratigraphic analysis at the Neolithic pile‐dwelling settlement of Dispilio (Kastoria, northern Greece) to trace past ecological threats and unravel the resilience strategies of the lake‐dwellers against the continuously altered microenvironments. By correlating the results with regional environmental and cultural events, this paper questions the role of environmental changes as triggers for cultural modifications and considers a wide range of strategies for coping with wetland hazards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maui residents are reckoning with tourism in the aftermath of the 2023 fires. Drawing from historical sources and popular media reports, we argue that beyond the island's strained relationship with the tourism industry, residents are contending with the slow emergency of plantation disaster capitalism. We draw from Naomi Klein and Kapua'ala Sproat's (2023) concept of plantation disaster capitalism which identifies the plantation industry's domination of resources as the basis of tourism's untethered control of land and water on the island. These crisis-driven industries perpetuate dependence through ongoing cycles of accumulation by dispossession. The concept of 'slow emergencies' further accounts for how, while the Maui fires rapidly destroyed lives, over a century and a half of settler colonial, racial, and capitalist relationships had already restructured landscapes and livelihoods and set the stage for the 2023 disaster. In critically addressing calls for tourism's resurgence, this conceptual paper contributes to emerging scholarship on plantation disaster capitalism in tourism destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer vision‐based fire detection algorithms have been extensively researched over the past decades as they offer reliable and efficient solutions to early fire detection, as well as economical solutions in outdoor environments. The proposed systems have different levels of complexity; nevertheless, they rely heavily on colour based fire segmentation as the first processing stage using different colour spaces. This paper presents a new flame‐based colour space which accentuates the difference between fire and non‐fire pixel values. The hybrid Artificial Bee Colony‐Teaching Learning‐based Optimisation (ABC‐TLBO) and the k‐medoids clustering algorithm along with a Feature image constructed manually from a wide dataset of fire and non‐fire pixels were used to deduce the optimised colour space conversion matrix. The latter can then be used to transform the RGB pixels from a camera feed into the new Flame‐based colour space for a more efficient fire segmentation. The proposed colour space is capable to separate fire and non‐fire pixels into two intensity classes, whereby the resulting between‐class variance is significantly widened; this maximises the effectiveness of the binary thresholding to separate fire from non‐fire pixels. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed flame‐based colour space provides a superior average qualitative and quantitative performance on benchmark datasets compared to state‐of‐the‐art colour models; a 20% average increase in F1 score demonstrates a better balance between fire detection and false alarm rates. Moreover, the computation time of the fire detection system is faster by 15.6% in average. The proposed system provides a better implementation of the colour‐based fire segmentation processing stage in vision‐based fire detection systems; it vindicates, in this application context, the superiority of flame‐tuned colour space over conventional ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Status epilepticus is a life-threatening condition that is defined as refractory (RSE) when the seizure activity continues despite treatment with benzodiazepine and a second appropriate treatment. Super refractory status epilepticus (SRSE) is an RSE that persists or recurs for ≥24 h. Few papers have reported the outcomes of pediatric patients affected by RSE and SRSE and treated with neuromodulation therapies. Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) is an approved treatment for drug-resistant epilepsy. We present our findings of pediatric patients treated with VNS for RSE/SRSE. Methods: We present a case series of seven consecutive pediatric patients treated with VNS for SRSE since 2012 by a single surgeon in Monza and Padua. A rapid titration was started soon after implantation. We considered electroclinical data before and after VNS implantation and at the last follow-up. Results: We achieved the resolution of SRSE in five out of seven patients in a mean time of two weeks. At the last follow-up, these patients had a significant reduction of seizure burden without any relapse of SE. Discussion and Conclusions: Based on our limited findings, we discuss the potential role of VNS therapy in similar but distinct clinical contexts. For patients with drug-resistant epilepsy and RSE/SRSE, prompt VNS consideration is suggested, offering rapid responses and potentially reducing pharmacological load. Meanwhile, in NORSE/FIRES, we suggest early neuromodulation during the acute phase if standard treatments prove ineffective or not tolerated. This approach may leverage VNS's potential anti-inflammatory effects and neuromodulation, enhancing patient-specific treatments. Expanding case studies and prolonged follow-ups are recommended to strengthen these clinical insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analysed nine years (2012–2019) of fire observations from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard the Suomi-NPP satellite to assess the post-monsoon crop stubble burning activities over northern India. The 2020 fire season (September-November) was analysed extensively, and spatiotemporal trends were examined. Our analysis indicates that about 60% of post-monsoon fires occurred in the state of Punjab, followed by Madhya Pradesh (11%), Haryana (4%), and Uttar Pradesh (3%). The year 2020 saw the greatest fire activity in Punjab and across the country since 2016. Over the nine years, Punjab did not show any systematic trends in fire activities, whereas Haryana and Madhya Pradesh demonstrated an overall decreasing (45% lower in 2020 compared to the 2012–2019 mean) and increasing (185% more in 2020 compared to 2012–2019 mean) trends, respectively. The high fire occurance in the Punjab are related to high percentage of crop area with specific variety of rice, which produces high straw load and mature in shorter time. The increase in Madhya Pradesh is directly related to an increase in rice crop planting area over the years, whereas the decrease in Haryana is related to changes in crop residue management. The uncertainty analysis in this paper shows that over a given region, day-to-day variability in fire counts can have sampling biases due to changing satellite viewing geometry. Furthermore, long-term trends can also be impacted by the reduced sampling of satellite fire detections under cloudy conditions. However, large scale spatiotemporal analysis of fires in this area provides crucial and well sought-after information for crop fire control and air quality management in north India. The district level analysis for the four states signifies the critical information that satellites can provide for identifying hotspots and planning regionally focused mitigation strategies to curb pollution from crop burning fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire can cause devastating damage to ancient buildings; therefore, a theoretical basis regarding the stages of fire development and fire extinguishing studies in historical buildings is provided by studying the release patterns of combustion gas products from ancient building timbers. In this paper, TG-MS-FTIR experiments were employed to investigate the gas products and release patterns of ancient building wood during pyrolysis. Meanwhile, PY-GC/MS experiments were carried out in a helium atmosphere at temperatures to study the thermal cracking products of ancient building wood. From the experiments, it can be concluded that the values of the activation energy of ancient building wood range from 78.93395 to 209.8952 KJ/mol, with a maximum value at a conversion rate of 0.3 and a minimum value at a conversion rate of 0.9. The gasses produced during the pyrolysis of ancient construction wood were mainly CO, H 2 O, CO 2, and CH 4 , and the mass spectrometry analysis showed that H 2 O had a double peak shape, CH 4 had only one peak, and CO 2 had two peaks. The overall trend of CO precipitation is that the amount of CO precipitation increases first and then decreases, and the amount of CO precipitation increases slowly at temperatures above 520 °C. The DTG maxima of ancient building timber differ considerably from those of fresh wood. This is due to the release of terpenes, which affect the intensity of their combustion. At the same time, the lignin content of ancient building timber is reduced, and the pyrolysis of lignin inhibits the pyrolysis of cellulose to a certain extent. There is a greater difference between ancient building timber and fresh wood at approximately 300 °C due to the decrease in lignin content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canton (present-day Guangzhou) has long flourished as a port city. As the city expanded in the nineteenth century, the risks of conflagrations increased; streets became more crowded, buildings were more often made of wood, and there was more use of open fires. The reconstruction of Canton after conflagrations provides an excellent way to observe the resilience of urban space, understood here as the result of interactions among different stakeholders. This paper explores how authorities, local communities, foreigners, and Hong merchants addressed fires and rebuilt through laws, regulations, technologies and cooperation, and how responses to fire destruction shaped urban space. Divers stakeholders affected the reconstruction of buildings and streets. The government made laws to widen streets, communities built watchtowers, and foreigners made new plans for Thirteen Factories, a neigbhorhood along the Pearl River. At the same time, conflicts between communities and foreigners obstructed plans for urban transformation and maintained the stability of urban structures. The communities kept the traditional local community organizations the 'Kaifong' (local organization in street) who opposed the widening streets and fought against proposed fire zones around Thirteen Factories, thus pitching local interests against those of the foreigners in a complex social, political, and cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a modeling approach for characterizing the probability of wildfire ignition caused by faults on power distribution systems. The proposed model serves as a starting point in research literature to illustrate, from an analytical perspective, the many factors that influence wildfire ignitions in power distribution systems. This paper presents the series of events that leads to power-system-related wildfire ignitions, and characterizes the wildfire ignition probability as a combination of the probability that a fault occurs along a power distribution line segment, and the probability that the fault results in the sustained ignition of a vegetation fuel bed surrounding the line. The proposed model integrates a variety of data including environmental conditions, power system protection settings, and power system line flows. A case study is performed on a test 33-bus distribution system using observed historical weather data from a high-threat fire district in California. The California case study is utilized to investigate the effects of three primary factors (wind speed, line congestion, and protection settings) on wildfire ignition probability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fire is a natural calamity which can engulf each and every object of Nature as well as human beings. As a social institution, library should develop fire prevention system to protect its safety. There are many ways to prevent the fire but with the technological advancement, library has to change their policy to combat with this natural element. Internet of Tings (IoT) which enriches our life with comfort and ease is one of the greatest technologies in this present era. This paper not only highlights the historical origins of fire detection and alarm system but also gives an ample light on designing a block diagram, flow-chart along with code which is written and tested in Tinker cad app. This code supports the Arduino UNO software (IDE). One temperature Sensor and a flame or gas Sensor is also used to protect this hazard. It also explains how this system works with different embodied object. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a class of heritage buildings, such as museums, palaces and castles, which are closed buildings with multiple layers and exits. There are a lot of precious heritage and cultural relics in heritage buildings, and a large number of tourists need to be received every day. When suffering from emergencies such as fires, heritage buildings will be confronted with serious consequences if individuals cannot evacuate in time. In this paper, the path intelligent optimization for dense crowd emergency evacuation is proposed in heritage buildings. Firstly, based on Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm (AFSA), agglomeration model is used when there is no guidance of guide personnel. Secondly, single-layer evacuation model is used to classify individuals into different categories based on improved K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) algorithm. The model can help individuals choose the nearest stair and save escape time. Thirdly, based on Dijkstra shortest path algorithm, multi-layer evacuation model is used to find the shortest distance and the optimal path for individuals to reach the exit. These models are applied to the Louvre in order to verify the rationality by calculating the approximate evacuation time. In case of emergency, the algorithm proposed in this paper can be modified according to the actual heritage buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes real cases of fi res on board as well as investigation and determination of fi re causes by experts from Forensic Science Centre ‘’Ivan Vučetić’’ (FSC Ivan Vučetić). The methods of determining the causes of fi re are described and characteristic defects that may cause fi re are pointed out. Conventional wiring diagrams are displayed on vessels, indicating potential electric shock hazards. The impact of electric current onto the human body is described, also the boundary current and the contact voltages are given. When connecting the vessel with a cable to the power grid, the possibilities of protection against electric shock are discussed. Several real cases of fi re are described in which some characteristic faults are mentioned as possible causes of fi re and some results of the investigations are given. The aim of the paper is to attract the attention of the colleagues who are researching the causes of fi re breakouts, such as investigators and experts, and others who are engaged in navigation and vessels. The aim is to contribute to the scientific literature in this insufficiently analysed yet very interesting area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wildland fires and wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires quite often become the focus of discussion among fire researchers whenever large outdoor fires are the topic, especially because of their global occurrence and their potential for causing serious damage. But at the same time, large urban fires have been occurring in Japan especially after major earthquakes or with high winds, at densely built urban area consisting of old wooden houses. Normally, fire spread is caused by three mechanisms: flame, radiation, and firebrands, especially in the cases of wildland fires, WUI fires, and large urban fires. And what is common between WUI fires and large urban fires is structure–structure fire spreading. In Japan, "Taika" (large urban fire) is a fire when the total burnout floor area is 33,000 m2 or more. The present paper first discusses the history of large urban fires in Japan, then examines the national standard regulations for fire safety in Japan aimed at mitigating the damage caused by those fires. Finally, an overview of current scientific research in methods of controlling urban fires in Japan is provided. This paper compiles such impotent information on large urban fires in Japan, which is the novelty and merit in this work. Furthermore, the contents in this paper will be contributing to the progress of new project ISO/TR 24188 on "Large outdoor fires and the built environment—Global overview of different approaches for standardization", at ISO/TC92/WG14 "Large outdoor fires and the built environment". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased wildfire activity and altered post-fire climate in the Southern Rocky Mountains has the potential to influence forest resilience. The Southern Rocky Mountains are a leading edge of climate change and have experienced record-breaking fires in recent years. The change in post-fire regeneration and forest resilience could potentially include future ecological trajectories. In this paper, we examined patterns of post-fire spectral recovery using Landsat time series. Additionally, we utilized random forest models to analyze the impact of climate and burn severity on three fire events in the Southern Rocky Mountains. Fifteen years following the fires, none of the burned stands fully recovered to their pre-fire spectral states. The results suggested that burn severity significantly impacted post-fire spectral recovery, but that influence may decrease as time since fire increases. The biggest difference in forest recovery was among fire events, indicating that post-fire climate may be influential in post-fire recovery. The mean and minimum growing-season temperatures were more significant to post-fire recovery than the variability in precipitation, which is consistent with field-based analysis. The present study indicated that, as warming continues, there may be changes in forest density where forests are not regenerating to their pre-fire spectral states. Additionally, this study emphasizes how high-elevation forests continue to regenerate after fires, but that regeneration is markedly affected by post-fire climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National days of mourning are state-sponsored rituals of collective grief enacted in the public sphere by political authorities to symbolically mark and emotionally cope with a socially significant loss. These officially declared and ceremonially performed state rituals of communion in grief provide privileged epistemic opportunities for unravelling the politics of grievability underpinning a society's willingness to mourn its dead. This paper focuses on comparing and contrasting two case studies – the Colectiv nightclub fire and the flu epidemics – in order to grasp the politics of national mourning in the Romanian post-communist context. After identifying the criteria of grievability underlying the declaration of national mourning in cases of mass death as consisting in a 'chronotopic togetherness' in death that is characterised by an 'instantaneity of emotional shock,' the paper argues for enlarging these criteria of grievability so as to include the victims of socially invisible traumas inflicted by structural violence, such as those killed in epidemics and car road accidents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In defining a fire scenario for residential buildings, designers may need to consider the room of origin and temporal factors such as the time of day, day of the week, etc. that a fire may occur. It is commonly accepted that statistics from fire incidents can be used to help determine these factors. This paper examines fire incident data available from the West Midlands Fire Service in England to assess the likelihood of a fire starting within different room types in dwellings, accounting for both the property type and the time of day. Results of the analysis are compared to data available from the literature and, similar to other studies, kitchen fires have been found to be the most likely place that a fire starts irrespective of the dwelling type. The paper pays particular interest to fires in flats (apartments) since these dwelling types typically have a greater relevance to fire safety designers. The paper shows that fires in flats should be treated separately from other dwelling types where the likelihood of a fire starting in a kitchen is 76% on average compared to 68% in other dwelling types. Further differences are evident when the likelihoods are considered as a function of the time of day and other room types. The paper ultimately provides analysis from previously unexamined incident data which can be used to aid designers of residential buildings that comprise of dwellings, when considering fire safety strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper describes real cases of fires on board as well as investigation and determination of fire causes by experts from Forensic Science Centre ‘’Ivan Vučetić’’ (FSC Ivan Vučetić). The methods of determining the causes of fire are described and characteristic defects that may cause fire are pointed out. Conventional wiring diagrams are displayed on vessels, indicating potential electric shock hazards. The impact of electric current onto the human body is described, also the boundary current and the contact voltages are given. When connecting the vessel with a cable to the power grid, the possibilities of protection against electric shock are discussed. Several real cases of fire are described in which some characteristic faults are mentioned as possible causes of fire and some results of the investigations are given. The aim of the paper is to attract the attention of the colleagues who are researching the causes of fire breakouts, such as investigators and experts, and others who are engaged in navigation and vessels. The aim is to contribute to the scientific literature in this insufficiently analysed yet very interesting area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This two-part paper is intended to inform power system engineers, electrical engineering academicians, and suppliers of electrical apparatus of the threat of wildfires initiated from mal-operation of electrical grids and the unexploited opportunity to develop proper solutions and preventive means to such lethal events. This part (Part I) reviews and categorizes research in different fields of science and industrial projects that attempt to address wildfire issues. The topics include prediction and prevention means, detection methods, monitoring and surveillance techniques, suppression methods, allocation and mapping algorithms, and a summary of research and educational efforts. Subsequently, this paper highlights the damages and negative effects that a wildfire can cause to the electric grid and the interruptions to its continuous operation. Finally, this paper analyzes and categorizes the various scenarios of faulty electrical networks that may lead to wildfires. Part I of this paper provides the ground work and information for the solutions and discussions presented in Part II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this part of the paper (Part II), available technical solutions to minimize or prevent wildfires caused by power networks are reviewed in more detail. These methods include fundamental changes to power system equipment, periodic checkups and maintenance, identification of faults via voltage/current waveforms, changes to protection and relaying settings and coordination, and installation of new power system apparatus. The strengths and drawbacks of each method are discussed. The discussion section brainstorms some future possible solutions that smart-grid technologies can enable. The paper concludes that there has neither been enough research in universities nor enough investment by industry to develop viable preventive solutions for wildfires that initiate from the daily operation of electrical power grids. This, in the authors’ opinion, is the crucial time for investment in research and development to tackle the lethal wildfire problem while electric power networks offer “the lowest hanging fruits to pick.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the relationship between fire department response times and fire outcomes is critical for understanding the impact of a fire department in a community. This paper outlines a statistical analysis of United States fire department response times to fires in 1–2 family residential dwellings between the years 2002–2017. Using data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS), it is shown that a log-normal distribution provides a reasonable approximation of the empirical distribution of response times. Furthermore, this paper investigates the effect of increasing response times on several different measures of fire severity, including the reported fire spread category, the estimated monetary property and contents losses, and the reported flame damage. It was found that all averaged measures of fire severity increase over the interval of 3–13 min of response time, which is primarily due to the increased likelihood of very severe fire incidents at longer response times. An analysis was conducted to assess the effect of meeting the first unit response time benchmarks outlined in NFPA 1710 on the severity of fire outcomes in a community. It was found that department response times were most strongly correlated with the fraction of fires that do "extreme" damage to at least one story and the fraction of the property value lost. It has been proposed that a power law distribution is appropriate for modeling the distribution the burned areas in urban fires. In order to assess whether this proposition is supported by United States data, a Monte-Carlo methodology has been developed to estimate the burned area indirectly from NFIRS data. Finally, several methods are presented for evaluating data consistency and quality from the NFIRS reports. One of the major findings of this study is the quantification of the effect of response time on various measures of fire loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the European impact and circulation of news concerning the Great Fire of London in 1666. The study dwells on the diplomatic correspondence and manuscript newsletters of Italian diplomats residing in England, on the testimonies of contemporary observers, and on the production of printed news publications. In particular, it analyses the role played by the Tuscan resident in London, Giovanni Salvetti Antelminelli, while investigating the functioning of the information‐gathering process as well as the material and cultural resources put in place in the effort to report news about a disaster. In this regard, the event has been contextualised within a much larger period comprising the pandemic crisis of 1665 and the military campaign carried out by the English Crown during the Second Anglo–Dutch War. The analysis of the European media landscape during this period illuminates the mechanisms related to circulation and transmission of news and the relationship between internal political propaganda, as well as the response and the positioning of external observers in regard to an unexpected occurrence. Finally, comparison of sources allows us to stress the essentially dialectical nature between manuscript newsletters and printed news publications during the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence of fire is one of the most important features for identifying and characterizing destruction events. Analysis of microscopic remains of fire has developed exceedingly in recent years, enabling archaeologists to examine new questions relating to the intensity of destruction events and to the circumstances of the creation of destruction layers. One of the most crucial events in the history of the Southern Levant is the Babylonian destruction of Judah and its capital Jerusalem in 586 BCE, which shaped the biblical narrative and theology for generations to come. Building 100 was an extraordinarily large and rich elite building, thoroughly destroyed during the Babylonian campaign. This paper presents a study of the destruction layer excavated within the rooms of the building. FTIR spectrometry and archaeomagnetic analysis were combined in the micro-archaeological study of the remains in order to create a detailed reconstruction of the destruction event. This reconstruction sheds new light on how the Babylonian destruction was manifested in reality in the elite buildings of Jerusalem. • The paper reports the study of the destruction process of an elite building during the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem. • FTIR spectroscopy and Archaeomagnetism were combined to reconstruct the fire event. • Evidence of widespread fire throughout the structure suggests deliberate burning. • Detailed reconstruction shows lower exposure to heat in parts of the structure. • Criteria of FTIR spectroscopy signals for heating to low temperatures were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moriche palm (Mauritia flexuosa Linn f. [Arecaceae]) is a dominant species in the savanna margins of the Caribbean island of Trinidad. The savanna margins are frequently subjected to fires and the moriche palm, like many palm species, is adapted to cope with a degree of fire damage. These palms also frequently host large termite nests that tend to burn during fires, which causes further damage to the palm stems. This paper explores the possibility that the combination of termite nests and frequent fires can increase tree mortality. Two post-fire surveys were conducted to record, evidence of fire exposure, fire damage to termite nests and fire damage to palm stems. In both surveys, the majority of palms with termite nests suffered fire damage to their stems, while none of the termite-free palms showed damage. Furthermore, a comparison of nest size and damage to the bark showed stems with larger nests had significantly more damage than those with smaller or no nests. The results suggest that the presence of termite nests increases the extent of fire damage to palm trunks by providing a point of combustion that focuses flames on the already compromised stem tissue. Long-term studies are warranted to investigate the impact of repeated fires on wild arborescent palm populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, global warming has intensified fires that have destroyed huge forested areas in various parts of the world. Argentina has not been exempted from this problem, nor has its province of Chaco. Therefore, this article attempts to give a geographical look at the issue of forest fires that occurred in nine departments in the east of this province during the period between 2015 and 2020. Through statistical analysis and georeferencing of information from different sources, the paper aims to identify the fire outbreaks that have been recorded in the study area described above and in that period of time, and characterize the current provincial management on the subject of fire risks. The production of cartography was made from the use of Qgis. In 2020, the region under analysis suffered a large number of fire outbreaks in rural areas that affected a little more than 60,000 hectares, destroying pastures, native and planted forests and, consequently, deteriorating soils, wildlife, and also damaging stubble cover and farmlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the tracking and erosion of silicone rubber and EPDM insulation in the DC inclined plane tracking and erosion test. Silicone rubber filled with alumina tri-hydrate fails due to combustion in the gas phase or erosion paths, but with no evidence of tracking. EPDM fails due to tracking and surface capturing fire, from dry-band arcing leaving a black residue while impinging the surface. Carbonaceous residue on EPDM gives rise to leakage current magnitude, whereas fused silica-based residue on silicone rubber is shown to promote combustion. A high amount of alumina tri-hydrate replacing the polymeric fuel in the composite is shown as a primary factor preventing failure and changing the nature of the residue in the DC inclined plane tracking and erosion test. Depolymerization is the main degradation mechanism reported for silicone rubber and EPDM, with notable degrees of crosslinking reported only for silicone rubber. Crosslinking reduces the amount of silicone rubber undergoing depolymerization, thus, the amount of fuel prone to combustion is reported to promote a coherent residue shield against the eroding dry-band arcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies show that long-term poor mental health outcomes for disaster-affected people are predicted by postdisaster stressors. Despite this finding, existing recovery frameworks vary in how these stressors are conceptualised. This paper examines community members' subjective perceptions of what they found problematic and useful in their recoveries after the Australian 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, and considers them in the light of these frameworks. We report the findings from responses to semi-structured survey questions as part of the Beyond Bushfires study, 3–4 years after these bushfires (n = 811). Participants identified the biggest problems as managing rebuilding processes and managing their own mental health, memories of the Black Saturday fires, and their concerns for family members. The four most useful supports were family, friends, rebuilding resources, and their community. We found a complex interplay of the same factors operating as both stressors and supports, particularly in relation to family levels of coping. Disaster recovery efforts require the simultaneous management of physical rebuilding and human processes. Families, friends, and neighbours are underestimated resources in postdisaster recovery. Given the complex interplay of the same factors operating as both stressors and supports, interventions are needed that maximise the positive dimensions of these factors. To manage this complexity, multiple frameworks are needed to guide disaster recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the issues of the contents and the significance of Ulpian’s text D. 19, 2, 9, 3 within a wider context of allocation of risk in lease agreements and the place of fire, conflagration (incendium) among the different forms of vis maior in Roman legal sources. Considering the problem of subsequent impossibility of performance in locatio conductio (rei), D. 19, 2, 9, 3 stands out as the one mentioning periculum in relation to locatio fundi, however, it is burdened by different interpretations. The analysis in the article starts with the D. 19, 2, 9, 3 and then continues setting it in the context of other related texts in which the Roman jurists dealt with the problem of fire in lease agreements. The conclusion is drawn on the probable changes in the text as well as on the function of the term fortuitus casus in the line of the texts dealing with fire. It emphasizes the connection between fire (ignis) and conflagration (incendium) marked by the words fortuitus casus, which would show a differentiated approach to incendium as a form and an example of vis maior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses ethnography and interviews with 15 participants who were actively involved in the campaign following the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire to address the question of how campaigners use street mobilization to seek justice in the aftermath of a disaster. Analysis of observations and themes suggests that campaigners used street mobilization to do two things. First, they used it to build solidarity with supporters through accessibility, the use of shared social spaces and collectively showing respect for losses. Second, they used it to protest in a way that challenged negative stereotypes and projected their power to the authorities, who could not ignore such a large and dignified mobilization. Whereas previous social psychology research on disaster communities focuses on the determinants of the immediate responses of people who experienced a disaster, we show the strategic aspects of such disaster communities. Please refer to the Supplementary Material section to find this article's Community and Social Impact Statement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The horror of the devastating Grenfell Tower fire, and the shock that 'it could happen here', in 21st century Britain, led politicians, professionals, and community workers to proclaim that 'Grenfell changes everything'. Affected people, turned into activists by the disaster, committed to ensuring that such a disaster could never happen again, by demanding changes to regulations and policy. Whereas public health literature addressing activism focuses on strategies and conditions for 'successful' collective action, the experience of activism after Grenfell has been characterised by frustrating partial wins, inertia, delay, and setback. This paper seeks to theorise the activist condition of seeking change that is refused and to do so in a way that values the agency and care of (thwarted) activism. Inspired by Haraway's 'staying with the trouble' and critical scholarship on hope, and drawing on three years of knowledge exchange and ethnographic engagement with the community response after Grenfell, I explore the trajectories of six activist change efforts: a fire safety campaign, engagements with a Public Inquiry, campaigns to preserve community assets, community gardening, silent walks, and provision of support to children at a community centre, each addressing social determinants of health and 'staying with the trouble' in different ways. I argue that setbacks do not invalidate a struggle or warrant despair, but that in insisting on caring for others' lives, activism succeeds in instantiating a caring world. Beyond hope and despair is the staying power of communities who value human life and solidarity and keep fighting for them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pipelining is a powerful technique to achieve high performance in computing systems. However, as computing platforms become large-scale and integrate with heterogeneous processing elements (PEs) (CPUs, GPUs, field-programmable gate arrays, etc.), it is difficult to employ a global clock to achieve synchronous pipelines. Therefore, self-timed (or asynchronous) pipelines are usually adopted. Nevertheless, due to their complex running behavior, the performance modeling and systematic optimizations for self-timed pipeline (STP) systems are more complicated than those for synchronous ones. This paper employs marked graph theory to model STPs and presents algorithms to detect performance bottlenecks. Based on the proposed model, we observe that the system performance can be improved by inserting buffers. Due to the limited memory resources on the PEs, it is critical to minimize the number of buffers for STPs while satisfying the required timing constraints. In this paper, we propose integer linear programming formulations to obtain the optimal solutions and devise efficient algorithms to obtain the near-optimal solutions. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms can achieve 53.10% improvement in the maximum performance and 54.04% reduction in the number of buffers, compared with the technique for the slack matching problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have yielded state-of-the-art performance in image classification and other computer vision tasks. Their application in fire detection systems will substantially improve detection accuracy, which will eventually minimize fire disasters and reduce the ecological and social ramifications. However, the major concern with CNN-based fire detection systems is their implementation in real-world surveillance networks, due to their high memory and computational requirements for inference. In this paper, we propose an original, energy-friendly, and computationally efficient CNN architecture, inspired by the SqueezeNet architecture for fire detection, localization, and semantic understanding of the scene of the fire. It uses smaller convolutional kernels and contains no dense, fully connected layers, which helps keep the computational requirements to a minimum. Despite its low computational needs, the experimental results demonstrate that our proposed solution achieves accuracies that are comparable to other, more complex models, mainly due to its increased depth. Moreover, this paper shows how a tradeoff can be reached between fire detection accuracy and efficiency, by considering the specific characteristics of the problem of interest and the variety of fire data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Detecting fires at an early stage is crucial for mitigating and extinguishing fires. The increased use of biofuels in Northern Europe has led to an increased number of fires in storage facilities. These fires are often caused by self-heating in the interior of the stored materials and slowly develop to smouldering fires. Consequently, these smouldering fires are usually detected several days or weeks after the initial smouldering fire had started. At this point, measures to extinguish the smouldering fire inside the material are difficult as the fire has grown for a long time and is located inside the material. This makes it difficult to gain a successful effect of any extinguishing agents. This paper presents a pilot study in lab scale suggesting levoglucosan as an early tracer for smouldering fires using 600 g cotton as the biomass source. The advantage of detecting levoglucosan as a fire signature is that it serves as a tracer compound for biomass burning and is produced at temperatures of 200-400°C reducing the risk of false alarms from emissions produced at lower temperatures. In this paper, levoglucosan was detected in aerosols emitted in an early stage from smouldering fires and was analyzed by ultrasonic assisted extraction followed by gas chromatographic separation and mass spectrometric detection. First detection of levoglucosan was made in the first sample, collected after 30 min when the smouldering fire was only a few cubic centimeters of the cotton package. In addition, levoglucosan was found in the solid residues of carbonized cotton after the initial smouldering process had moved through the material. The findings should be regarded as screening results to be used for the development of sensors and technology for smouldering fire detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates a simple method to enhance visibility through clean-burning flames that allows new opportunities to perform optical metrology in fire research. The method combines narrow-spectrum, blue illumination and matched optical filters to reduce the influence of optical emissions from a glowing hot target and a large natural gas diffusion flame. The paper describes how the required illumination strength and filtering can be estimated from basic combustion and optical principles. Compared to white light, the required illumination to detect objects engulfed in flames with this method is reduced by a factor of 104. A series of experiments are conducted to determine the effectiveness of this method, successfully demonstrating the ability to take images of objects in natural gas fires up to 1000 kW using 200 W of illumination power. These experiments corroborate the estimation of relative optical intensities, as it is observed that the target can be imaged successfully when the estimated signal-to-noise ratio exceeds 2:1. The temporal averaging of successive images is also demonstrated to further improve the image quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper sets out to answer two questions. What effect does installing smoke alarms have on reported fires and casualties for the "average" household? How much of an effect would increasing smoke alarm utilization have on the total number of fires and casualties in the United States? The installation of smoke alarms in homes without them will reduce the expected number of fires reported from a (formerly) non-smoke-alarm residence by a factor of 3.5 to 5 (a 70 to 80% reduction) and reduces the number of expected casualties by a factor of 2.5 to 3.5 (a 60 to 70% reduction). Unexpectedly, the number of casualties per reported fire is lower for non-smoke-alarm households compared to smoke-alarm households. This could be due to changes in people's behavior when they have a smoke alarm in the home or because the less dangerous fires are preferentially extinguished when smoke alarms are present. If smoke alarms were installed in all residences, the number of fires reported to the fire department could be reduced by 25% or more. More realistically, each percent increase in smoke alarm penetration reduces reported fires by more than 2.6%. There is evidence that the number of homes with smoke alarms are lower than current estimates that rely on telephone-only survey interviews. The actual smoke alarm usage is probably below 92%. It seems likely that this is due to a correlation between phone presence and smoke alarm utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia often experiences natural disasters and extreme weather conditions such as: flooding, sandstorms, heatwaves, and bushfires (also known as wildfires or forest fires). The proportion of the Australian population aged 65 years and over is increasing, alongside the severity and frequency of extreme weather conditions and natural disasters. Extreme heat can affect the entire population but particularly at the extremes of life, and patients with morbidities. Frequently identified as a vulnerable demographic in natural disasters, there is limited research on older adults and their capacity to deal with extreme heat and bushfires. There is a considerable amount of literature that suggests a significant association between mental disorders such as dementia, and increased vulnerability to extreme heat. The prevalence rate for dementia is estimated at 30%by age 85 years, but there has been limited research on the effects extreme heat and bushfires have on individuals living with dementia. This review explores the differential diagnosis of dementia, the Australian climate, and the potential impact Australia's extreme heat and bushfires have on individuals from vulnerable communities including low socioeconomic status Indigenous and Non-Indigenous populations living with dementia, in both metropolitan and rural communities. Furthermore, we investigate possible prevention strategies and provide suggestions for future research on the topic of Australian bushfires and heatwaves and their impact on people living with dementia. This paper includes recommendations to ensure rural communities have access to appropriate support services, medical treatment, awareness, and information surrounding dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the understanding of the degradation of the environment in Madagascar. Specifically, it analyzes spatial and temporal distribution of fires in Madagascar and identifies the factors behind these fires. Data provided by MODIS sensor between year 2014 and year 2018 over the entire territory of Madagascar are used. The results indicate that the number of fire points observed in Madagascar is stable during the period 2014 to 2018, except for the year 2016, a year of severe global drought. The fires burn on average an area of 3,757,792 ha per year. The majority of these fires are observed during the dry season and reach their maximum in number and area in September and October. At first glance, fires cover almost the entire country. However, spatial and spatio-temporal analysis show that the fire points are grouped into aggregates of order 1, 2, 3 or 4. Aggregates indicate areas where there is a concentration of fire points. Areas including higher order aggregates are the most exposed to fires. These are areas for which special attention must be paid. The results of the spatiotemporal permutation analysis indicate that fires close in space are also close in time. The distribution of aggregates in relation to tracks and villages is presented and shows that fires mainly spread near inhabited places and tracks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fire that erupted in Grenfell Tower in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London on 14 June 2017 is widely acknowledged to be the worst experienced during UK peacetime since the nineteenth century. It is confirmed to have resulted in 72 casualties and 70 physically injured. It has also left a community physically and emotionally scarred. That the catastrophe occurred in the country’s wealthiest borough added to the shock while the circumstances surrounding it also begged questions relating to political and corporate responsibility. The UK Prime Minister swiftly established a public inquiry which is ongoing and anticipated to stretch well into 2019. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of what some are interpreting to be a national atrocity. It begins by describing the events at the time of the fire while also identifying the key controversies that began to surface. It then examines the local geography of Grenfell Tower and the surrounding Lancaster West Estate revealing an astonishing landscape of inequality across the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The paper then uncovers how such inequality was combined with a malevolent geography of injustice whereby for several years residents raised regular warnings about the building’s safety only to be disregarded by the very organisations which were there ostensibly to protect and safeguard their livelihoods: the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea municipal authority and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. The paper then deepens the analysis identifying how these organisations disavowed the local democratic process, in doing so dishonouring so tragically the Grenfell residents. It then finds this democratic disavowal to be multiscalar: for amid an incremental neoliberal political assault on the national welfare state, public housing across the country has become wretchedly devalued, stigmatised, and the subject of scandalous maladministration. A final section offers some preliminary analysis of the early stages of the Grenfell Inquiry, while also revealing the dignified resistance of Grenfell community in the face of London’s increasingly plutocratic governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decades, increasing attention has been directed to understanding the structural response to various scenario fires, which is stimulated by the trend of considering localised burning in large open plan compartments. Beam-column elements as widely used in modelling steel frames have been extended to account for the thermal impact in OpenSees, the development of which is undertaken to formulate the displacement and force-based beam elements. After including the non-uniform thermal expansion along the element length caused by localised heating, the force-based beam-column element has shown greater efficiency compared to the displacement-based element. A detailed discussion regarding the computational performance of both beam-column elements has been presented in this paper, which concludes that force-based beam-column elements can better represent the localised plasticity of fibres caused by non-uniform heating. A generic simply supported steel beam can be modelled even with two force-based elements to reproduce accurate mid-span deflection under localised heating. A steel beam subjected to a localised fire is presented as a case study in this paper, experiencing run-away collapse after 15 min of exposure when the load ratio reaches 50%. Using a 12 element force-based beam-column model and shows equivalent accuracy against 48 element displacement-based beam-column model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an experimental investigation on the mean flame height and the air entrainment rate of double buoyancy-controlled jet fires. Three rectangular nozzles of different aspect ratios with different geometric shapes under the same sectional area were used in this paper. For each experimental condition, two identical nozzles with the same heat release rate were considered, but the distance between two nozzles varied. Experimental results show that the mean flame height decreases sharply with the distance at first, and then changes slightly with the further increase of the distance. Meanwhile, the value of the ratio of air entrainment increases with the distance. A correlation between the dimensionless flame height and dimensionless heat release rate resulting in a general linear relation has been developed, and a developed model for the ratio of air entrainment and the distance has been achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A comprehensive review of LL fault diagnosis methods in PV systems. • An ensemble learning model based on probabilistic strategy is developed. • The main features of the fault are extracted from I-V curves using a Simulink based model of PV arrays. • A feature selection algorithm is used for each learning algorithm to reduce the dataset and increase the classification accuracy. • The proposed model is very reliable and able to detect and classify all the LL faults accurately. The fault diagnosis of photovoltaic (PV) arrays aims to increase the reliability and service life of PV systems. Line-Line (LL) faults may remain undetected under low mismatch level and high impedance due to low currents of faults, resulting in power losses and fire potential disaster. This paper proposes a novel and intelligent fault diagnosis method based on an ensemble learning model and Current-Voltage (I-V) characteristics to detect and classify LL faults at the DC side of PV systems. For this purpose, first, the key features are extracted via analyzing I-V characteristics under various LL fault events and normal operation. Second, a feature selection algorithm has been applied to select the best features for each learning algorithm in order to reduce the amount of data required for the learning process. Third, an ensemble learning model is developed that combines several learning algorithms based on the probabilistic strategy to achieve superior diagnostic performance. Here, we find an excellent agreement between simulation and experimental results that the proposed method can obtain higher accuracy in detecting and classifying the LL faults, even under low mismatch levels and high fault impedances. In addition, the comparison results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed method is better than individual machine learning algorithms, so that the proposed method precisely detects and classifies LL faults on PV systems under the different conditions with an average accuracy of 99% and 99.5%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, ceasefires have primarily been seen as military tools used to halt violence for specific periods of time or as a teleological bridge between war and peace. Drawing from the literature on complex political order, this paper argues that rather than only affecting levels of violence ceasefires can be better conceptualised as particular types of wartime order and that consequently they can have diverse military and political consequences on the ground. These may include for recognition and legitimation, rebel governance, economic networks, state consolidation and rights to citizenship and property. The article uses this broader conceptual foundation and an analysis of 186 ceasefire agreements to create a typology with four different types of ceasefires and theorise about their potential ramifications for other contested areas beyond the military arena. It illustrates the different types of ceasefires from the typology with empirical examples from the Syrian civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing smoke vehicle detection methods are vulnerable to false alarms. To solve this issue, this paper presents two automatic smoke vehicle detection methods based on spatiotemporal bag-of-features (S-BoF) and professional convolutional neural network (P-CNN). In the first method, we propose the S-BoF model to characterize the key regions detected by the visual background extractor (ViBe) algorithm. The S-BoF model contains three groups of features, including color moments on three orthogonal planes (CM-TOP), completed robust local binary pattern on three orthogonal planes (CRLBP-TOP), and histogram of oriented gradient on three orthogonal planes (HOG-TOP). The extracted features are fed to the support vector machine (SVM) and classify the key regions to smoke regions or non-smoke regions to further detect smoke vehicles. In the second method, we propose the P-CNN model to extract more robust and complementary spatiotemporal features by designing three professional models to analyze different kinds of features in the key region sequence on three orthogonal planes. The three professional models, including color CNN (CCNN), texture CNN (TCNN), and gradient CNN (GCNN), are based on three independent CNN128 models with different inputs. The experimental results show that the proposed methods achieve higher detection rates and lower false alarm rates than existing smoke detection methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Modelling and characterisation of fire-spotting generated fires. • Study the effects of the atmospheric stability conditions on the behaviour of fire-spotting generated fires. • During stable conditions, there are many active fires because turbulent heat transport does not merge them rapidly. • During unstable conditions, the formation of unburned islands surrounded by the fire are observed. • Different atmospheric stability conditions cause different risks requiring different management. This is the first part of two papers concerning fire-spotting generated fires. In this part we deal with the impact of macroscale factors, such as the atmospheric stability, and in the second part we deal with mesoscale factors, such as the flame geometry. For this study we adopt an approach where the motion of the front is split into a drifting part and a fluctuating part. The drifting part, that can be provided by choosing an existing operational model, is here based on the level-set method in analogy with WRF-SFIRE model. The fluctuating part, that is the result of a comprehensive statistical description of the physics of the system and includes the random effects, is here physically parametrized to include turbulent hot-air transport and firebrand landing distance. In order to highlight the net effects of the random contributions due to turbulence and firebrand flying, a simplified model without fire-atmosphere coupling is considered. Numerical simulations show that the atmospheric stability is an important factor for wildfire propagation. In particular, unstable conditions boost the number of fire-spotting generated fires at small elapsed times as well as the strength of turbulence leading to rapid merging and the formation of unburned islands surrounded by the fire. Stability conditions have then an effect on the risk and the management associated to fire-spotting generated fires. In fact, with stable conditions (corresponding for example to the night-time) the turbulence is not strong enough to merge the fires and, at large elapsed times, this results into a higher number of independent fires but lower burned area with respect to unstable conditions (corresponding for example to the day-time) when the push of turbulence leads to faster merging resulting into a lower number of independent fires but higher burned area. Finally, with stable conditions less fire fronts need to be managed at short time, but more fire fronts need to be managed than with unstable conditions that however show a higher risk because of the merging of independent fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a dust fire or explosion event (deflagration) occurs in any facility the results are significant and the consequences can range from only a simple clean-up and/or minor personnel injuries to catastrophic property damage with significant personnel injuries and even the possibility of fatalities. The follow up reviews from these dust explosion incidents has shown that there is a general lack of understanding of this hazard. The forest products industries contain recognized sources of dust hazards. There is a need for better understanding, training and awareness of the potential for dust hazards on the part of employers, employees and forest industry type facility owner operators. The intent of this paper is to provide a basic level of understanding of this subject and to provide useful reference and resource materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale urban conflagrations in informal settlements are a frequent global event, however there is a lack of experimental research and knowledge within literature on how informal settlements fires spread to support local or national intervention strategies. This paper, therefore, presents results and analysis of a full-scale fire spread experiment of a mock 20 dwelling test settlement with a 4 by 5 layout aimed at understanding settlement-scale fire spread behaviour. A "fire line" scenario was created by simultaneously igniting four dwellings in a row, and then allowing the fire to propagate through the settlement to replicate fire disasters involving large numbers of homes. Results highlight the critical hazard posed by the close proximity of neighbouring dwellings (1–2 m), with wind playing a primary role in directing and driving the spread process. Even with a relatively mild wind speed of 15–25 km/h, the fire spread through the entire mock settlement within a mere 5 min. Following ignition of a given dwelling, flashover is reached very quickly, with the temperatures reaching more than 1000°C within 1 min, and downwind neighbour structures igniting less than a minute thereafter. The results suggest that multi-dwelling effects are not dominant in these types of fires, but may become meaningful at a larger scale when branding and topography play a role. Findings show that on a global scale fire behaviour is analogous to a wildfire with a continuous fire front moving through an area, although individual dwellings still do follow the distinct phases of enclosure fires, except that collapse occurs more rapidly than in formal structures. This experiment represents one of the larger urban fire tests conducted to date, and the largest informal settlement fire experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combustion behavior of two oil tank fires will be influenced by the interaction of their respective flames. This paper presents the experiments to investigate the evolution of the visible flame height of two oil tank fires under different diameters, lip heights and distances. The results show that when the tank spacing is small, the vortex structure plays an important role in the flame behavior showing an enhancement of the flame height. The flame height increases with the increase in lip height and reaches a local maximum value. The flame merging characteristic is influenced by the burner size and shape. A dimensionless model of the visible flame height of two oil tanks fire has been proposed, taking the tank diameter, lip height, and tank spacing into consideration. The correlation is validated using the experimental data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The slope of ground has a significant impact on the spread and burning process for spill fires on land. In this paper, a series of continuous spill fire experiments were conducted on a fireproof glass sheet with different slope angles (0.5°, 1°, 3°) to study the effects of slope on fuel spread and burning behaviors. The results show that the spread process can be divided into four phases based on time-dependent spread area. The maximum spread area and spread rate both increased greatly with increasing slope angle for a constant discharge rate, while the effect of slope on the steady burning area was only slight. The burning rate in the quasi-steady burning phase tends to be a little lower with increasing slope. It is proved that the burning rate at the quasi-steady burning phase is lower than that of pool fires under the same burning size and the corresponding ratio is close to 0.32, independent on the discharge rate and the slope angle. Then, a simple modification coefficient was introduced and a burning rate model of spill fires was developed, which provide a basis for liquid layer simulation under the burning conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of compartment fire experiments on four 12.8-m-long composite floor beams with various end support conditions. Specimens were constructed as partially composite beams, consisting of W18×35 steel beams and 83-mm-thick lightweight concrete slabs cast on top of 76-mm-deep ribbed steel deck units. Test variables included two types of simple shear connections (shear-tab and welded-bolted double-angle connections) and the presence or absence of slab continuity over the girders. Each specimen was subjected to gravity loading using hydraulic actuators and 4,000-kW compartment fires produced using natural gas–fueled burners. This study evaluated the characteristics of the fire loading and thermal and structural responses of the specimens. The test results indicated that there were significant effects of thermal restraints on the behavior and failure modes of the specimens with simple shear connections. The specimens resisted gravity loads at large vertical displacements near midspan (approximately a ratio of span length over 20) under fire loading. However, various limit states and vulnerabilities to fires were observed, including local buckling of steel beams near supports, flexural failure (yielding of steel beams and concrete fracture near restrained end supports), and connection failure (weld shear or bolt shear) during heating and cooling, which could lead to partial or total collapse of the floor system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]