More than 300 universities, companies, and organizations around the world rely on SAFIR®, an innovative computer program co-developed by Whiting School of Engineering Assistant Professor Thomas Gernay to allow users to simulate how buildings and infrastructure respond to fire.
On September 15, Gernay brought some of these users together for Johns Hopkins’ first SAFIR® Day, an event aimed at allowing experts to share their knowledge and experience with the innovative computer program.
“SAFIR® Day was a huge success,” said Gernay, of the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering and instructor in the Whiting School’s Engineering for Professionals online master’s program. “We were thrilled by the outstanding lineup of speakers and the quality of the presentations. The number of attendees also exceeded our expectations, and we were happy to reach people of many different backgrounds and countries.”
Gernay co-developed SAFIR® with Jean-Marc Franssen at University of Liege.
The event included 12 presentations from SAFIR® users based around the world, including in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States. Speakers demonstrated how they have used SAFIR® to not only model the fire response of buildings, bridges, and tunnels but also in new research. More than 130 people from 35 countries attended.
A presentation by Jeremy Chang, a technical director at the engineering firm Holmes Australia & NZ, and colleague Linus Lim focused on how their firm has used SAFIR® over the years for both design and forensic applications.
“In my part of the presentation, I discussed the steps we took to integrate SAFIR® into our design processes and explained the reasons for choosing SAFIR® over other analysis tools. In Linus’ segment, he elaborated on how we used SAFIR® to replicate the performance of the roof structure during and after a significant fire incident in Auckland,” Chang said.
Chang first encountered SAFIR® as a master’s student, using it to investigate the behavior of steel trusses at the World Trade Center. He is impressed with the evolution of SAFIR® over the years.
“Over the years, the program and its preprocessors have evolved, and for more than a decade, it has transformed from a research tool to a very powerful program for design purposes. Our structural fire team uses this program to analyze the structural behavior in fire for a wide range of building types,” he added.
Chang said events like SAFIR® Day let him connect with the global community of SAFIR® users and learn how they apply the tool.
“We are always keen to engage in activities related to SAFIR®, and to have some insights into how individuals around the world use this program. While the tool itself is the same, the input parameters and challenges encountered by people vary significantly due to the local regulatory frameworks. It is always fascinating to discover how a design project is being developed in different countries,” he said.
Videos of all the SAFIR® Day presentations are now available here.
“I organized this event because I thought it would be worthwhile to the SAFIR® community and more broadly to structural fire engineers to hold this one-day webinar to exchange on these advanced models and that turned out to be true,” Gernay said. “I want to thank all the speakers for their outstanding contributions. We will definitely do this again next year.”