The conference programme covers a wide range of subjects. Chicago has the largest public transport network in the USA after New York, and is well situated in the centre of the automotive industry. The last time that the conference was held was in Göteborg in 2010, attended then by over 200 delegates. The Fires in Vehicles (FIVE) conference will be held in Chicago in September, and we are hoping to see substantial attendance. We can see that there is a steadily growing interest in fire safety in tunnels: not only the underground railway and METRO project (see Brandposten no. 45, 2011), but also for road tunnels and road vehicles. In this issue we present a brief account from the conference, looking towards the next conference in Paris, in 2014. The ISTSS conference in New York was a great success. Such a standard will be of considerable help in improving fire safety, as well as being a valuable tool for insurance companies, manufacturers and operators who want to tackle the commonest source of fire in vehicles, in the engine compartment. Articles in this issue of Brandposten describe the work of drafting an international standard for testing the performance of fire extinguishing systems in vehicle engine compartments. Within all these areas, SP has been active for many years in furthering development. An approach that is increasingly being used is that of risk analysis, particularly for more complex designs and systems. Important factors in achieving high safety are the choice of safe materials and the use of effective detection and extinguishing systems. There are, of course, solutions that provide high fire safety for transport systems too. This means that Sweden’s ability to introduce its own requirements is restricted, and we have to work internationally to (for example) get decisions from the EU. Fire protection in road, rail, air and sea transport, on the other hand, is based on international rules. we can choose our own safety requirements. Swedish regulations specify the required level of fire protection in buildings, i.e. A ship, too, may have a fire while lying in port, or out in the middle of the North Sea on a stormy November night, which means that conditions will be very different for determining how the event unfolds.
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A vehicle, on the other hand, may be on a remote country road, a long way from any rescue services, or perhaps involved in a complicated accident in a tunnel. In general, evacuation into roads, squares or parks etc. When determining the necessary capacities of escape routes from a building, designers usually know fairly well what external environment those leaving the building will find. To this must be added the problems of evacuation and rescue associated with fires in vehicles. Large quantities of toxic gases can also be released which, if the fire occurs in an underground facility, represents a particular threat to life.
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However, one drawback is that lightweight materials can be easy to ignite and can have poorer fire resistance than heavier products. Rapid developments in lightweight materials make it possible to build ships, high-speed trains, metro trains, buses and other vehicles with improved fuel economy and able to carry more load per litre of fuel, and thus with reduced environmental impact. Fires in transport systems Fires in transport systems are a challenge for fire experts.