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Personal Protective Equipment protects firefighters against multiple hazards. The fit and comfort of such equipment are directly related to proper sizing systems which in turn depend on accurate anthropometric data. To present design solutions to the equipment used by Portuguese firefighters, a study designated as Size FF Portugal – Anthropometric Study of Firefighters is currently underway. Forty-four firefighters participated in a pilot study conducted in a fire brigade in the North of Portugal. This paper contrasts preliminary anthropometric data of participants with an anthropometric database of Portuguese workers. Results of the Student T-test at 95% confidence level show significant differences between the stature of Portuguese male firefighters and Portuguese male workers. On the contrary, the weight of male firefighters and workers do not present significant differences. In the case of women, differences between workers and firefighters’ weight and stature are not observed. A discussion of the results and final considerations are presented.

Suppose a ‘fire’ breaks out in the digital realm. Which fire brigade would we call? Do we sufficiently understand the vulnerabilities? What should we prioritize in our fire-fighting efforts? What powers do the authorities have to minimize the number of victims and to limit the damage? Are their powers commensurate for our digital world? These questions take on renewed urgency when the ‘fire’ in question is not limited to the digital domain but, left unchecked, has the ability to disrupt the ‘real world’ and undermine confidence in public institutions. Answering these questions inevitably leads to fundamental questions about the role of government, citizens and businesses. These themes are the subject of this report.

This literature review is part of the “Improvement the ability of action of HZS JMK (fire brigade of the South Moravian region) - use the truck driving simulator in research, training and evaluation of driving behavior during driving a fire truck with active blue lights” project funded by Technology agency of the Czech Republic.

The economic mood in Europe in early 2010 was very nervous, fragile and turbulent. Greece was in a free fall due to her past fiscal irresponsibility and statistical fraud that had begun to surface to the public awareness. Financial stability of the whole Eurozone was soon in danger, as the Greek bush fire threatened to turn into a European forest fire, with damaging ramifications to the nascent recovery—and there was no existing fire brigade, nor fire extinguishers. Even worse, we had just experienced the most severe global financial crisis since the 1930s, which had badly damaged growth and jobs and led to an increase in fiscal deficits and public debt. Almost all European economies were vulnerable.

Post-fire resistance assessment of industrial structures is of prime importance to companies having to deal with such accidental situations. Most of the time, the structure or at least a major part of it still stands. Being able to quickly assess the temperature it was once submitted to, is very important to reevaluate its load-bearing capacity. The latter is to help take wise decisions regarding its dismantling or replacement and to avoid unnecessary delays during which the industry can no longer carry out its business. This paper describes a quick methodology to do so and demonstrates its accuracy with a case-study. Although full-scale fire experiments are reported in the literature, they are mostly under-instrumented, in such a way that few information is usually available. However, in 2018, a full-scale and fully instrumented fire experiment was conducted by Tongji university on a steel frame single-story building. This case study is simulated in the present paper using two different numerical simulation techniques, namely 2-Zone model using Ozone and Computational Fluid Dynamics using Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS). Through the FDS model, several features of the test can be thoroughly modeled to increase the accuracy of the results, however increasing the calculation time. While the 2-Zone model delivers quick and accurate results (time versus temperature development) especially if the model can be calibrated by the use of tests or based on visual observations reported by the fire brigade during the fire.

In many of our discussions with police officers from around the world, we acknowledge that policing as a public service is stuck in its fire brigade solutions to people’s needs. Pressures and demands—coupled with decreasing public resources—are funnelled through an old style of working. Answering call after call for help, with a mix of experienced people responding to those calls, does not always add up to a formula for sharing best practice. Working to promote a collective understanding of why there needs to be a way of consolidating best practice for common problems enables a shared approach to the logic of problem solving.

In Italy, rainfall-induced shallow landslides are frequent and harmful phenomena. The prediction of their occurrence is of social significance for civil protection purposes. For the operational prediction of rainfall-induced shallow landslides empirical rainfall thresholds based on the statistical analysis of past rainfall conditions that triggered slope failures are commonly used. The paper describes a catalogue of 1981 rainfall events, which caused 2408 shallow landslides in Italy in the period 1996–2012. Information on rainfall-induced landslides was collected searching chiefly online newspaper archives, blogs, and fire brigade reports. For each documented failure, we reconstructed the triggering rainfall conditions (rainfall duration D and cumulated rainfall E) using national and regional rain gauge networks. We analysed the rainfall conditions to determine new ED rainfall thresholds for Italy. The calculated thresholds can be implemented in a landslide forecasting system to mitigate landslide hazard and risk.

Pureora Forest village was designed by the New Zealand Forest Service (NZFS) as a planned logging settlement, to provide a stable long-term future and good housing conditions for the workforce. This chapter describes the establishment of the village from 1945; the people and the social organisations they created; and the officers of the milling companies and of NZFS who were in charge. The stories of life in the village during its prime, and of how the community developed in isolation, of the children, the schools, the Football Club (both the players and the bar), the volunteer fire brigade, the sly-groggers, the ambulance, are all previously unpublished, genuine solid-gold social history, contributed by people who lived there and who recorded their first-hand memories on tape.