SFPE & SFPE Foundation Open Library

Welcome to the SFPE & SFPE Foundation Open Library

The Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) and the SFPE Foundation are proud to offer a growing open-access library designed to advance the science and practice of fire protection engineering. This digital resource hub provides free, public access to a wide range of technical papers, research reports, guidance documents, and educational materials developed through the work of SFPE and its Foundation.

Whether you are a student, academic, engineer, or fire safety professional, the SFPE Open Access Library serves as a valuable tool for exploring innovations, best practices, and evidence-based insights in the field of fire safety. By making this content freely available, SFPE reaffirms its commitment to global knowledge-sharing, professional development, and the ongoing advancement of fire protection engineering.

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Recent Submissions

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    Fire Testing of Resilient and Sustainable Building Materials
    (SFPE Foundation, 2025-10-15) Richard Walls; Miss Hasimawaty Binti Mat Kiah; Yohannes Shewalul; Natalia Flores-Quiroz; Carlo Kuhn
    The proliferation of sustainable and resilient construction materials presents a critical fire safety challenge. This report provides technical guidance on the fire testing of these materials, establishing a framework that links material properties to fire dynamics. It presents a state-of-the-art review of key material categories (biomass-based, non-combustible, and synthetic) and critically assesses the strengths and shortcomings of existing standards for fire resistance, reaction-to-fire, façades, and photovoltaic (PV) systems. A central finding is that current fire tests are often inadequate for evaluating novel materials, as they can fail to measure key hazards like smoke, toxicity, and smoldering, and their results are difficult to apply to real-world designs. The report concludes that bridging this safety gap requires a multi-faceted approach, including the expansion of material property databases, the development of new test methods, and an increased reliance on performance-based design.
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    WUI Virtual Handbook for Property & Community Fire Risk Assessment & Mitigation [1st Edition]
    (SFPE Foundation, 2023) Darlene Rini; Alex Cooper; Julia Cuendet; Walker Donuji; Hannah Govaert; Meghan Joy; Amelia Pludow; Christin Pongratz; Michael Wojcik
    [For the most recent version of the handbook, please visit https://www.sfpe.org/wuihandbook. This first edition is being stored for archival purposes, but is not up to date.] This is a virtual handbook of engineering-based resources to support fire department WUI property fire risk assessments and recommended mitigation strategies for use in the field.
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    Anthropometric Data and Movement Speeds
    (SFPE Foundation, 2020) John Gales; Michael Kinsey; Peter Thompson; Julia Ferri; Georgette Harun; Chloe Jeanneret; Timothy Young; Will Wong; Jared Stock; Lingyi Chen; Håkan Frantzich; Silvia Arias; Jesper Friholm
    This project presents a compilation of contemporary, project specific, movement speeds from existing published and unpublished data sets from industry and academic partners globally, with special considerations for accessibility, upwards/downwards movement, etc.). The project also studied the underlying fundamental individual characteristics of movement and presents this information to set the stage for future improvements in data collection.
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    Survey of Occupant Load Densities in Retail Buildings
    (SFPE Foundation, 2019) Gianluca De Sanctis; Michael Moos; Christian Aumayer
    Occupant load is a critical factor in egress analyses for fire safety systems. Codified values for occupant load for many occupancies are estimates which frequently do not reflect actual conditions. Further, a full statistical analysis of the data, taking into account its variability, is often not undertaken and reported. For retail buildings in particular, the variability of the occupant load can provide important design information. The project described in this report provides: • an in-depth assessment of currently available people counting systems, identifying strengths and weaknesses. • a review of occupant loads in actual fire incidents in retail buildings to assess optimum measurement intervals and statistical analyses. • an in-depth statistical analysis of occupant data in Swiss retail stores, exploring the impact of occupancy detailed type, building configuration and location.
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    The Contributions of Fire Engineering in Addressing the Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Problem [White Paper]
    (SFPE Foundation, 2025) Pascale Vacca
    The Contributions of Fire Engineering in Addressing the Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Problem [White Paper] introduces the work performed by the volunteers that participated in the SFPE Foundation Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Working Group Initiative. The WUI fire problem is analyzed, focusing on how fire engineering can contribute in addressing the issues, gaps and needs that are related to WUI fire risk. The definition of the WUI is explored, along with its fire exposure mechanisms and ignition pathways. The concept of risk at the WUI is described and defined for two different scales, the parcel level and the community level. Current knowledge and tools are also addressed at both scales. Community notification and evacuation are also discussed, and for each section, gaps and needs are highlighted. One of the main gaps that has been identified is the lack of a systemized data collection on fire exposure and structural vulnerability, along with evacuation data. Current WUI regulations are analyzed, and while they do provide a foundation, they need to evolve to better address the increasing complexity and scale of present and future wildfire challenges. Quantitative risk assessment methods for both community and individual parcel scales are showing promising developments, though further refinement is needed before they can be fully integrated into standard fire safety engineering practice.