Fire risk is a major threat to life, property and natural resources in southern California. Recent fire disasters occurred in autumn 2003 and 2007. Fire risk management deals with these hazards, input data are collected, analyzed and evaluated. One of the most important input data is the vegetation density in the endangered areas. Here we describe methods to map vegetation density forming five ...

Biobased flame-retardant polylactic acid composites were prepared using ammonium polyphosphate (AP), lignin, and a raw montmorillonite (ANa) as the intumescent formulation. The concentration of AP ANa was varied in order to study its influence on flammability properties composites. samples submitted cone calorimeter test, thermogravimetric analysis coupled Fourier-transform infrared spectroscop...

Life expectancy is increasing in muscular dystrophies: as an example due to technical medical interventions like spine surgery and home ventilation, boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy become men. Increasing evidence concerning retarding drugs becomes available for muscular dystrophies. Cardiac symptoms can effectively be treated with drugs and also cardioprotective drugs are tested. New reta...

Climate change is predicted to shorten the fire interval in boreal forests. Many studies have recorded positive effects of fire on forest growth over a few decades, but few have modeled the long-term effects of the loss of carbon and nitrogen to the atmosphere. We used a process-based, dynamic, forest ecosystem model, which couples the carbon, nitrogen and water cycles, to simulate the effects ...

A stochastic cellular automata model for wildland fire spread under flat terrain and no-wind conditions is proposed and its dynamics is characterized and analyzed. One of three possible states characterizes each cell: vegetation cell, burning cell and burnt cell. The dynamics of fire spread is modeled as a stochastic event with an effective fire spread probability S which is a function of three...

The trend towards performance-based codes for achieving acceptable fire safety creates a significant demand for improved material properties and computer fire models. The performance-based engineering analysis is very difficult to achieve for wood-based materials because of their complex physical processes for pyrolysis and combustion. To address this need the cone calorimeter (ASTM E1354) was ...