The Rosepark care home fire in 2004 in which 14 people died was the worst fire in a care home in the UK. Martin Shipp discusses the investigation, research and lessons learned from the tragedy as presented at a special conference.

Recent research into water mist systems has shed new light on the factors that are critical to their success in commercial buildings, as Louise Jackman and Kelvin Annable report.

Research into the sprinkler protection of automated storage systems used by IKEA has recently been undertaken, as Magnus Arvidson reports.

Venting excess pressure from buildings protected by inert gas or clean agent suppression systems is critical, but the data used to calculate the required vent area can sometimes be flawed, as Paul Coxon explains.

Following their previous research on car park fires, BRE Global was commissioned to conduct tests into the effectiveness of sprinklers in car parks using stacking machines. David Crowder sets out the main findings.

Water mist systems are increasingly being considered and used for the fire protection of buildings in the UK, including commercial premises and as an alternative to sprinkler systems. However, the impact of design variables in the application of such systems is often not well understood...

With more than a thousand fires a year, prisons in England and Wales need very specific means to suppress fires and allow the safe but secure evacuation of cells. Kelvin Annable reports on some ground breaking research.

Guidance for fire safety in car parks is based on data on vehicles which are now decades old. Here we report on the findings of a three year government-sponsored project carried out by BRE to investigate the fire characteristics of modern vehicles and the potential fire spread hazard in car parks.