On 27th August 2019, our Centre Director Prof Guan Heng Yeoh has delivered a plenary section in the AFAC19 research forum hosted in Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC), Victoria, Australia. Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (AFAC) is a national council for fire & emergency service, partnering with Bushfire Natural Hazards CRC and Deutsche Messe.
During this research forum, Prof Yeoh has addressed the importance of firefighters' risk perception on the arising cladding fire topic, and how does it affect their safetiness during the operation process of the fire scene.
In this presentation, a fire risk perception survey developed by a collaborative effort from Fire and Rescue New South Wales (FRNSW) and University of New South Wales was presented. The survey can be subdivided into four major parts,i) demographic questions, ii) risk awareness and identification associated with cladding material, ), iii) the firefighter's own perceived risk associated with cladding fires and iv) risk mitigating behaviours. The majority of the questions are designed with five distinctive levels (i.e. ranging from rare to almost certain, or negligible to very high), and it will be distributed to firefighters from major state and rural fire agencies around Australia. The results will formulate a large and comprehensive database to increase our understanding of the firefighter’s risk perception associated with combustible cladding materials.