From 8^th to 12^th June, La Rochelle, France, hosted the 15^th International Symposium on Fire Safety Science (IAFSS 2026), organised triennially by the International Association for Fire Safety Science since 1985 and widely regarded as the premier global gathering for fire safety researchers, students, and practising fire protection engineers. The five-day programme featured invited lectures from world-leading fire scientists, parallel sessions of peer-reviewed papers, work-in-progress poster sessions, and a fire image showcase.

ZAG-FRISSBE was represented across all three formats of the scientific programme, with contributions spanning oral presentations, posters, and co-authored papers presented by collaborators.

Oral Presentations

Martin Veit presented his paper "Video Enhancement for Increased Spatio-Temporal Resolution in Thermal Videos: Demonstration on a Pool Fire", introducing an advanced video processing methodology with significant implications for the precision and detail with which fire behaviour can be captured and analysed experimentally.

Elijah Igweh presented "Temperature and Heat Flux Measurements from Firebrand Piles using Color Ratio Pyrometry", contributing to the growing body of research on firebrand characterisation, a critical area for understanding fire spread in wildland and urban interface contexts.

Posters

Dr Vadim Kudryashov contributed two posters to the symposium. The first, "Extended Application of Fire Resistance Test Results for Large Horizontal Rectangular Ventilation Ducts: Numerical and Experimental Insights", addressed the numerical and experimental basis for extending fire resistance test results to ventilation systems beyond those directly tested. The second, "Pre-Combustion Behaviour of Encapsulated XPS in Steel Assemblies under Standard Fire Exposure with Cooling", examined the behaviour of insulation materials within composite steel assemblies during and after fire exposure.

Dr Ulises Rojas-Alva presented a poster entitled "Statistical Analysis of International Fire Incident Datasets in Electric Vehicles", continuing FRISSBE's active research programme on EV fire data harmonisation and risk quantification.

Akash Jyothivas and Dr Andrea Lucherini presented "Experimental Study on the Thermal Penetration in Structural Timber Elements Exposed to Fire Decay and Cooling Phases of Post-Flashover Fires", contributing experimental insights into the thermal behaviour of timber structures during the often-overlooked decay and cooling phases of fully developed fires. A further poster, "Development and Application of a Dynamic Flame Extinction and Re-Ignition Model in FDS", co-authored by Dr Georgios Maragkos, Dr Jason Floyd, Dr Andrea Lucherini, Prof Alexander Snegirev, Elijah Igweh, and Prof Bart Merci, presented advances in computational fire modelling through the development and application of a dynamic flame extinction and re-ignition model within the Fire Dynamics Simulator.

Fire Image Award

Dr Ulises Rojas-Alva and IMFSE student Juan Felipe Sánchez submitted a fire image entitled "A-Ω of Thermal Runaway" to the Poster and Fire Image Award, in the category of fires in energy systems and industrial installations, encompassing electrical vehicles, hydrogen, photovoltaics, wind turbines, and storage facilities.

Nik Rus also submitted an image entitled "PV Fire Pyramid", depicting fire spread across a rooftop photovoltaic installation. The image illustrates a key finding from ZAG-FRISSBE's experimental research: PV modules accumulate heat and re-radiate energy to the roof surface, preheating a larger area than the flame alone, rendering fire retardants ineffective and allowing flames to spread across the entire area covered by the modules. The photograph was taken 22 minutes after ignition during an experiment with four modules installed in a dome configuration over a roof with a TPO membrane, capturing significant flame-module interaction in striking visual form.

Co-authored Papers Presented by Collaborators

Dr Andrea Lucherini contributed as co-author to four papers presented by researchers from partner institutions. Vinny Gupta (University of Waterloo) presented "Burning of Liquid Pools and Wood Cribs in Large Fully Developed Timber Compartment Fires". Stavros Spyridakis (University of Queensland) presented "Fire Performance of Thin Intumescent Coatings: Material Characterisation and Application to Mass Timber Structures". Ian Pope (DBI) presented "Charring and In-Depth Thermal Penetration within Cross-Laminated Timber Elements in Large-Scale Compartment Fires". Florian Put (Ghent University) presented "Updating of a Deterministic Model for the Free Thermal Strain of Concrete in Fire during Heating and Cooling using Novel Experimental Data and Bayesian Inference".

Taken together, ZAG-FRISSBE's presence at IAFSS 2026 spanned steel, timber, concrete, EV fires, wildfire dynamics, photovoltaics, and thermal imaging, reflecting the breadth and depth of research underway at the department and the strength of the collaborative network that ZAG-FRISSBE has built across Europe and beyond.