Nist Fire Research Resources For Distance Learning Featured At National Fire Academy Higher Education Conference - Brief Article

Journal of Research of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Sept, 2000

In June 2000, Fire on the Web was demonstrated for more than 100 attendees at the Second Annual Fire & Emergency Services Higher Education conference held at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, MD. Conference attendees included educators from over 65 different universities, colleges, community colleges, and state fire academies. The purpose of the conference was to begin development of a standardized fire science degree curriculum. Fire on the Web provides educators and students with access to a number of valuable NIST resources for distance learning programs. These include 60 000 references to the fire literature, experimental fire data, and fire models. NISTIR 6510, which is a compact disc (CD) based report of a fire recreation, also was displayed at the conference. This CD includes the computer-generated color animations of model simulations as well as the full text of the report. A video tape that featured three flashover scenarios was utilized to demonstrate the type of fire experiments conducted at NIST for which information is available.

NISTs presentation was taped for later broadcast over EENet, a broadcast network operated by the U.S. Fire Academy to provide state-of-the-art learning-at-a-distance programs to fire departments via satellite.