INTERNATIONAL FIRE CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION MALAYSIA 2015
Conference Main Theme – “Fire and Disaster Challenges”
The 21st Century is a challenging era with numerous changes in the construction industry as well as environment influence through climatical changes.
With the conversation of energy, preservation of environment to protect mother earth and Green-Built-Environment has emerged as the fore runner in the construction industry. Full timber structure construction is now being experimented in Europe and the rest of the developed countries. While the concept fulfils all the criteria of Green construction, it does pose challenges to the Fire and Rescue Services especially firefighters when dealing with a real fire incident. “Green” Built-Environment also inspired many innovative construction methodology and systems which may not take fire safety factor into consideration. Many recent major fire incidents were due to fire propagate through façade of highrise buildings, burning timber structured buildings produce higher heat release rate than masonry constructions, etc. The new trend poses challenges to the fire and rescue service as firefighters have to relearn the compartment fire behavior and firefighting technique.
The world trend is now designing super highrise as iconic building in competition to challenge construction boundary. Highrise dwelling complexes in major cities also mushroomed as a new trend in life style with mega size shopping centers, sports complexes and exhibition hall. All these modern buildings though have majestic appearance, they pose inherent fire risks of a new dimension in term of fire prevention, fire safety design and mass evacuation as their design goes beyond the prescriptive building codes. With the city-in-city concept mixing low and high risk occupancy group it is a daunting task for fire engineers and authorities alike to incorporate appropriate fire safety strategy.
For the rescue front, due to adverse global climate changes, prolong high surface temperature, Al Nino effect, etc, earth is now experiencing forest fires, typhoons and cyclones, floods, landslides, earthquakes and possibility of tsunami of such frequency never happen before. This poses even greater challenges to the fire and rescue services as the power unleashed by the force of nature is very challenging for manpower, equipment as well as resources.
IFCEM conference hopes to gather fire and rescue personnel as well as fire professionals in sharing their findings. Feedbacks and innovative concepts, ideas as the way forward for the fire industries.
Sub-theme 1 – “Operational Challenges for Firefighters”
The modern Firefighter’s multi-skill requirement in coping with ever changing legislations, Codes and Standards as well as operational requirements for firefighting. The complexity and scale of man-made and natural disasters encountered in today’s evolving environment present new challenges to firefighters in striving to achieve targeted response time and desired operational outcome. In response to the above, enhancing competency of firefighters is the future.
Sub-theme 2 – “New frontier for Fire Safety Engineering”
Designs outside the ambit of prescriptive codes present new challenges. What are the inherent fire risks presented by these designs and what are the issues that have to be addressed and lessons learnt from investigative efforts. On the basis of the above, what are the new trends emerging in tackling new risks and challenges presented by such new building designs.
Sub-theme 3 – “Impact of sustainable built-environment on fire safety”
Sustainable construction trends impact fire and life safety considerations. Behavior of fire changes with the introduction of many innovative construction methods and systems. Green building concept and design should be studied and reviewed with fire safety solutions to reduce adverse impact on life safety.
Source from: http://www.ifcem2015.my/