Fire safety engineering:
Quarterly newsletter - May 2016 Monideep Dey, PhD
This is the 1st newsletter published by Monideep Dey A newsletter will be published every quarter to inform subscribers of developments in Fire Safety Engineering (FSE), especially on the use of international FSE standards in national fire safety regulations. Reports of the activities of ISO TC 92 SC4, Fire Safety Engineering, in which Monideep Dey, PhD represents the American National Standards Institute as a Chair (Convenor), will also be included.
Using and referencing ISO and IEC standards to support public policy - Conference and training
UN Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland - Site of Conference
ISO and the WTO is promoting the use of ISO standards around the globe, specifically in developing countries. Recently, ISO, IEC and UNECE held a conference and training on“Using and referencing ISO and IEC standards to support public policy and regulation"in November 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland. 260 delegates from 65 countries attended. Presentations were made by national authorities, WTO officials, major ISO technical committees and industry representatives. There was significant attendance from developing countries. The conference was followed by a training workshop on the subject.
This conference was important for fire safety engineering because it provided useful information for the implementation of FSE practices in national fire regulations. FSE standards should have clear criteria for conformity assessment to be successful. Clear and simple criteria for conformity assessment is most important in developing countries where the “degree of experience in and implementation of FSE” is limited. Deytec, Inc. presented the information gained at the conference to ISO TC 92 SC 4 at its recent meeting in Linz, Austria in April 2016 (see below).
39th Meeting of ISO TC 92 SC 4, Fire Safety Engineering
Saint Florian, patron saint of Institut für Brandschutztechnik und Sicherheitsforschung GmbH (“IBS”) - Site of meeting
The 39th meeting of ISO TC 92 SC 4 was held in Linz, Austria in April 2016. The highlight of the meeting was the ongoing revision of ISO 23932, General Principles. The subcommittee had decided earlier to execute this revision to link its standards on FSE such that they form a package for users, and therefore become more practical and usable. The subcommittee had also decided to include an annex to the standard to clearly show the links. The set of ISO FSE standards is presently described in a document prepared earlier by Deytec, Inc. Deytec, Inc. presented the information gained at the conference described above to the subcommittee and suggested possible ways to improve its standards for emerging and developing economies. Deytec, Inc. indicated its intention to continue research on the topic, including attending future conferences sponsored by ISO.
The subcommittee recently revised its objectives that will be included in the business plan of the main committee, TC 92 Fire Safety. The new objective to develop standards “that can be applied worldwide irrespective of the degree of experience in and implementation of FSE” will be of particular interest to emerging and developing economies. A work plan based on the new objectives will be developed at the next meeting of the subcommittee in Seoul, South Korea, in October 2016.
