UK project aims to tackle shantytown fires

A multidisciplinary team from the University of Edinburgh is coming together for a new project to make informal human settlements more resilient to fires.

Over one billion people live in informal shack settlements and shantytowns around the world. These dwellings are some of the most vulnerable on the planet to fire hazards, with large populations living in tightly-packed environments, and buildings often constructed with highly-flammable materials.

The IRIS-Fire (Improving Resilience for Informal Settlements – Fire) project will involve members from Edinburgh’s engineering and political science schools. According to the team, it will use experimental and modelling fire science, unique data gathering in informal settlements and novel applications of existing satellite data.

Field research will be focused in Cape Town, South Africa, known as the country’s ‘fire capital’. Each year the city sees around 500 deaths and 15,000 hospital admissions due to fire.

“Informal settlements are some of the most dangerous locations for large and lethal fires to start and spread,” said principal investigator Dr David Rush, lecturer in structural engineering at Edinburgh.