This paper describes an experiment which aims to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of a Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) building model compared with equivalent architectural plans, for direction finding purposes. The effectiveness and efficiency issues being primarily investigated were number of tasks completed overall and task completion times. The experiment involved a series...

BACKGROUND Norway experienced two terror attacks on July 22, 2011. A car bomb exploded in the Oslo government district killing eight people. Shortly after, 69 adolescents gathered at a political youth camp were shot and killed at Utøya Island. First responders were exposed to multiple risk factors for the development of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). METHODS This cross-sectional study ...

AIMS Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a major public health problem. The objective of this study is to explore the effects of a dual dispatch early defibrillation programme. METHODS AND RESULTS In this pilot study, automated external defibrillators (AEDs) were provided to all 43 fire stations in Stockholm during 2005. Fire-fighters were dispatched in parallel with traditional emergenc...

Fire eruption (also known as ‘blow-up’ or ‘flare-up’) is a very dangerous aspect of wildland fire behaviour. It poses a significant threat to the safety of wildland fire-fighters and complicates the broader problem of wildfire risk management in complex terrain. Despite the seriousness of eruptive fire events, operational wildland fire spread models generally do not account for the possibility ...

The worldwide movement toward performance-based building codes is prompting the need for new computational methods to predict fire endurance of wood assemblies. Progress in the past twenty years in understanding fire endurance of individual solid wood components has been achieved in many different countries. The greatest opportunity for major advance in fire research is the development of compu...