New CTBUH initiatives to investigate link between fire and façades

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat has established three new initiatives in response to the Grenfell fire in London and other high-profile fires around the world.

The initiatives are:

• Creation of a new Working Group looking at the link between fire and façades
• $20,000 of research funding to further investigate this field
• A Fire Performance Workshop at the CTBUH 2017 Australia Conference

The new multinational, multi-disciplinary working group will examine the fire performance of façades. “Following a number of recent tall building fires that appear to have spread up the outside of the façade,” CTBUH said in a news release.

The research funding will be used to investigate and develop a database of high-rise fires that could be applied to the emerging field of machine-learning, which may lead to new and innovative fire solutions, CTBUH says.