Fighting fire

Case study Fighting fire with fire in Strathclyde

Drawing inspiration from a pioneering 1980s video game, Scotland’s Strathclyde Fire and Rescue service is saving lives in high-risk buildings with its building plan system.

If you are about to burst through a door and enter a burning building, you would ideally want to know what is behind that door — the layout of the building, the location of stairs and passageways, and anything inside that could cause a danger to you, or other people.

But, as anyone that has seen Ron Howard’s 1991 action thriller Backdraft will know, that is a luxury unavailable to traditional fire and rescue teams. Until now.

Inspired by the classic 3D video game Doom by id software, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue (SFR) has pioneered a high-risk building plan system, Fire Appliance. Like Doom, fire crews can visualise a building’s layout before entering potentially fatal situations. Building Information Modelling Much of the early work used in Fire Appliance involved surface-based CAD software to create simple 3D architectural models of buildings from 2D plans supplied by the Fire and Safety Department.

But this technology was found to be too cumbersome and SFR swapped to Graphisoft ArchiCAD, which eliminated the need for multiple CAD software. Graphisoft introduced Building Information Modelling (BIM) capabilities, which provide accurate and coordinated data to increase clarity on SFR’s touch screen Vehicle Mounted Data System.

The BIM models that SFR produce are regularly updated, and stored on hard disk on each of 200 fire appliances. To date this includes 7,800 buildings and 26,000 plans.

Called out to a fire, a Mobilisation Summary triggers each operation in the fire vehicle, enabling the crew to upload the appropriate building views and plans. If the crew see an item which might prove dangerous to the operation — a symbol, perhaps, show- Access Points on a ing a specific chemisection of the River Clyde cal storage container — they can bring up detailed operating pro- Riverside project cedures for dealing with the hazard. The River Clyde dominates Glasgow’s topog-

A colour scheme was developed to raphy and, following hundreds of years of enhance visualisation — red, purple and shipbuilding and international trade, has green — which has proved to be visible and many large structures along its banks. To clear under the street light conditions that improve access to the area, SFR has modelled crews often work in. The team has empha- 30 major structures and access points along sised increasing the level of symbols four km of the river, including ladders to the attached to the models, highlighting haz- river and moorings. This was done using ards, and producing consolidated models Ordnance Survey maps and SFR informathat include the civil infrastructure and sur- tion, with buildings mass-modelled using rounding buildings. ArchiCAD and made available for general

Under the leadership of John McNicol, the viewing with BIMx. SFR CAD team is now looking at other ways In contrast, more sensitive buildings such of displaying the models, such as incorporat- as HM Prison at Barlinnie, which is not coving them into 3D PDFs, or enabling them to ered by VDMS, can be classified as ‘restricted be viewed, in real time, with Graphisoft viewing’ with detailed maps accessible only BIMx, a virtual building explorer. on arrival at site.

BIMx is used to train firefighters and enable crews to familiarise themselves with sports Faster and friendlier stadia, for example, prior to major events. Asked why SFR uses ArchiCAD exclusively

The system is also being used to support for the development of Fire Appliance, John accident enquiries, providing government McNicol said: “ArchiCAD offered higher resoand legal inquests with information from lution capabilities, better building tools, and the model. Typically, accompanied by pho- was easier to use to manipulate the images we tos, fire service investigators are able to wanted. We were also able to discard a numshow what damage has been done and how ber of different software and keep the model this was likely to have been caused. within just one CAD application.”

SFR has continued to add symbols and Mr McNicol said having access to BIM colour coding, has enhanced building plans models of much of Glasgow will enable SFR and model definitions, and has added mate- to be much more proactive — predicting the rials such as glass and timber where appro- spread of fire, using computational fluid priate. Buildings can also be split into sec- dynamics and other tools, or to develop fire tions, roofs removed, and unnecessary fighting tactics using software like Cinema detail obscured to ensure fire crews can 4D linked to models. focus easily on important information. ■ strathclydefire.org ■ graphisoft.com