Fire Engineering Literature review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 9250 words

Fire Engineering - Literature review Example The study explores the role of these consultants in ensuring building design, development and sustenance for adherence to fire safety to understand the extent to which fire safety engineering solutions are important in fire engineering today. As buildings codes exist, so do the need for inspection for compliance and for adherence to fire safety which is usually overlooked by concerned administration or engineers in the respective departments. A building is a complex system with fire safety design being a part or inter-related sub-system of this complex system design. Two parameters: fire load density FLD (in MJm–2) and occupant load factor OLF are key in assessment of local fire codes in Hong Kong. A survey of private buildings in Hong Kong in February 1998 revealed that just 11 percent of the buildings were in satisfactory conditions in terms of fire safety. The survey was conducted by Fire Services Department (FSD) for provision and compliance with fire service installations and equipment (FSI) for fire prevention, detection and protection in the buildings. Incidents of fire in domestic and commercial buildings and rail and road tunnels have attracted criticism from the public as well as from other quarters and there have been constant changes in the building ordinance for fire safety to protect life and property. A framework for fire safety exists, based on which it is learnt that various countries including Hong Kong and Australia have developed a regulatory system for fire safety in buildings. The framework provides goals, objectives, performance requirements and means of compliance for building fire safety (Code of Practice for Fire Safety in Buildings, 2011). Factors determining fire safety in buildings, codes of practice for fire safety, design and performance of fire safety framework, compliance issues by segment, health and safety of building occupants and the insights into fire fighting industry in general in Hong Kong will be covered in this chapter. As buildings codes exist, so do the need for inspection for compliance and for adherence to fire safety which is usually overlooked by concerned administration or engineers in the respective departments. The role of these consultants in ensuring building design, development and sustenance for adherence to fire safety will also be explored to understand the extent to which fire safety engineering solutions are important in fire engineering today. Building occupancy Considering that Asian cities are becoming more urban with most of the population residing in high-rise buildings can be useful in studying the fire engineering solutions being employed to protect the life of the occupants and also the property. A study of the differences in structures shows that compartmentalized and non-compartmentalized structures with isomorphic and non-isomorphic floor plans can be assessed for fire safety (Livesay and Donegan, 2003, p 64.1) using different models like flame spread model, hea t transfer model, etc. (Bong, 2000). Hong Kong has a building control mechanism as shown in Figure 1 which includes design for fire safety mechanism as per codes of practice laid by two different legislative bodies, Buildings Ordinance (BO) and the Fire Services Ordinance (FSO), the compliance for which is overlooked by an Authorized Person (AP) acting as the project co-ordinator. The AP ensures that the building design, construction and management are in compliance with the BO in terms of fire engineering approach and performance (Lo et al, 2007, pp 133,134). Figure 1: Building control mechanism in Hong Kong. Source: (Lo et al, 2007, p 134). Building fire safety control mechanism takes into account the route complexity owing to the topological network of rooms and the passages that connect the rooms and floors to the exit space. Information theory and entropy are studied to formulate a mathematical model in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to evaluate the complexity of egress (or means of escape) based on route complexity. Building type comparisons are carried out by considering building plans as networks with the habitable compartments considered as the nodes of the network while the defined links between nodes or the connected passages between rooms and floors are considered as arcs or information steps. Using this information and the behaviour of fire using the different models, the egress

Volcanic Eruptions versus Human Civilizations 2mya Essay

Volcanic Eruptions versus Human Civilizations 2mya - Essay Example Besides, it will also assess the connection between volcanic activity and population distribution in the modern world and the ancient world (Small and Naumann, 2001, p. 32). The structure of the ancient civilizations shall also be another element that this paper will address as it endeavors to unearth how different civilizations functioned. Case study of such civilizations shall come from China, Asia, Africa and India. Additionally, this paper will also analyze the evolution of hominid and their association with the selected civilizations that this paper shall analyze, evaluate and discuss (Sparks et al., 2005, p. 41). Introduction There are volcanic landscapes all over the world that one may observe that at one time in history has tremendous effects on human culture and civilization. Perhaps the most prominent eruption in the recent past was the Toba eruption (Machida and Sugiyama, 2002, p. 49). This was the last massive volcanic eruption in history for the last few hundred thousand years ago. That is as far as the Mediterranean basin is an item of analysis. Many historians assert that this eruption drew in large populations after the eruption, contrary to popular beliefs that populations would normally move away from disaster zones (Lowe, 2002, p. 47). That may have been a historic coincidence. This does not wash away other facts that volcanic eruptions may act to disperse populations (Rampino and Ambrose, 2000, p. 32). Other civilizations have also been victims of volcanic activity. In fact, some civilizations have even disappeared in the aftermath of immense volcanic activity. Some historic examples include empires that were hardest hit during the Cycladic and Minoan that suffered massive disasters during the 1628 B.C mammoth eruptions. To say generalize that volcanic activity has a negative effect on civilization would not suffice an informed assessment (Rampino, 2002, p. 33). Rather, at times in history, there were occasions when effects of volcanic activ ity were profound on civilizations. Sometimes civilizations fell or declined owing to volcanic activities (Torrence and Grattan, 2002, p. 14). Nevertheless, such is just like the rise and wane of kingdoms. It happens that sometimes there are factors that promote the growth of civilizations or sometimes factors may set in that disfavor growth of civilizations. There could be a probability of coincidences. As such, there may be close relationships between such success factors, volcanic activity and the emergence of a civilization (Sharma, 2004, p. 29). However, volcanic activity remains the overriding factor given that it has a record that one may relate closely with the emergence of civilizations. Some other factors about volcanic activities such as shaping the landscape have a connection with early civilizations. This is because landscapes influence human settlements and civilizations emerged out from organized settlements. Another aspect about volcanic landscape is that nature of e conomic life and cultures that arise have some complex similarities across the world. This is so intricate in such that one may conclude that there is something about volcanic landscapes and cultures. Probably one may explain the issue of related economic activities to the fact that the mountains presented modified climate that was a gift to economic life (Robock, 2000, p. 42). Most communities that inhabited such volcanic areas responded to the uniqueness of their surrounding by