WP2.5 - Fire effects on buildings and people
The involvement of buildings in an urban wildland interface fire is a critical issue because it can lead to a drastic increase in the fuel load and large potential losses. For the assessment of the risk of ignition of the buildings, robust computational techniques are needed that take into account the gas phase conditions and the response of the solid material. Fire Dynamics Simulator computer code are used to model the conditions in the near vicinity of the targets, based on the results of the forest fire simulations. The spreading fire may also be hazardous to the people living in the area and to the fire-fighters assigned to protect the buildings, as they are exposed to critical conditions due to heat radiation and high temperature and toxicity of fire gases.