Fractional effective dose (FED) methods for predicting time to incapacitation and death of fires for use in fire safety engineering calculations. Physiology and toxicology of fire effluent components, decomposition chemistry of common materials, standard experimental approaches. Predictive models of material production rates. People movement characteristics related to building evacuation. Formulation and application of evacuation models. Human behavior factors affecting response of people to fire situations.

Validity, utility, reliability of current computer models. Applications of models in risk assessment, underwriting, loss prediction, hazard analysis. Development and validation of specific application models.

A review of the basic chemistry and physics necessary to understanding fire dynamics; and of the physics of heat transfer and turbulent fluid flow will be given. The nature and structure of premixed and diffusion flames will be presented.

The development of fire protection solutions can involve methods to comply with prescriptive requirements in codes or may incorporate some aspects which follow a performance-based approach. Following a description of the codes and standards process in the U.S., a review of the requirements for structural fire protection are discussed as an example, beginning with prescriptive approaches and ending with performance-based alternatives. The latter half of the course describes the methodology and motivation for performance-based design solutions. Case studies are presented to illustrate the design solutions achieved following the two approaches.