"The basic premise of this book is that design should be human-centered because it humancentered design that provides for the information that people need to adapt to the chaotic and uncertain way that fire develops." Attempts to show how this research cna be applied to staffing levels, hiring and promotion, budget allocation, and more. Includes examples from New York City
Developing resilience skills has the potential to shield firefighters and other emergency responders from the negative effects of stressful incidents and situations. Drawing on cutting-edge research, this SpringerBrief proposes strategies to prevent firefighter behavioral health issues using the proactive approach of resilience training. Further, resilience training aims to develop mental toughness and support overall well-being in all facets of the responder’s life. This book emphasizes lessons and research from Positive Psychology. A new branch in the science of how the mind operates, Positive Psychology focuses on developing emotional wellness and preventing behavioral health problems. It does so in part by teaching habits and skills that promote self-efficacy, social support, and realistic optimistic thinking. The program outlined in this book supplements current approaches addressing emotional and behavioral health problems that afflict the emergency response community. Such problems include PTSD, anxiety, burnout, alcoholism, depression, and suicide. The authors present interventions and measures for resilience training backed by research and demonstrated results within education, the military, and other communities. Drawing on her more than 25 years’ experience in working with fire service representatives at all levels, Ms. Deppa understands the importance of considering the fire service culture. Dr. Saltzberg, a practicing psychologist, has taught resilience skills to a wide range of populations, including students, teachers, counselors, and U.S. Army officers. Together, they present a compelling approach to preventing behavioral health problems before they occur.
This single resource for the fire safety community distills the most relevant and useful science and research into a consensus-based guide whose key factors and considerations impact the response and behavior of occupants of a building during a fire event. The Second Edition of SFPE's Engineering Guide: Human Behavior in Fire provides a common introduction to this field for the broad fire safety community: fire protection engineers/fire safety engineers, human behavior scientists/researchers, design professionals, and code authorities. The public benefits from consistent understanding of the factors that influence the responses and behaviors of people when threatened by fire and the application of reliable methodologies to evaluate and estimate human response in buildings and structures. This Guide also aims to lessen the uncertainties in the "people components" of fire safety and allow for more refined analysis with less reliance on arbitrary safety factors. As with fire science in general, our knowledge of human behavior in fire is growing, but is still characterized by uncertainties that are traceable to both limitation in the science and unfamiliarity by the user communities. The concepts for development of evacuation scenarios for performance-based designs and the technical methods to estimate evacuation response are reviewed with consideration to the limitation and uncertainty of the methods. This Guide identifies both quantitative and qualitative information that constitutes important consideration prior to developing safety factors, exercising engineering judgment, and using evacuation models in the practical design of buildings and evacuation procedures. Besides updating material in the First Edition, this revision includes new information on: Incapacitating Effects of Fire Effluent & Toxicity Analysis Methods Occupant Behavior Scnearios Movement Models and Behavioral Models Egress Model Selection, Verification, and Validation Estimation of Uncertainty and Use of Safety Factors Enhancing Human Response to Emergencies & Notification of Messaging The prediction of human behavior during a fire emergency is one of the most challenging areas of fire protection engineering. Yet, understanding and considering human factors is essential to designing effective evacuation systems, ensuring safety during a fire and related emergency events, and accurately reconstructing a fire.
Firefighters are dying more from health and wellness issues than from fires. Heart attack accounts for roughly 50% of on-duty deaths. Off-duty deaths from cancer and suicide far outnumber heart attack deaths. These three health and wellness issues have been a focus of fire service research as potential job-related issues. However, like the U.S. general population, these three health and wellness issues are highly preventable if the lifestyle risk factors involved are addressed early. This research was conducted for Howard County Fire and Rescue (HCFR) in Howard County, Maryland. HCFR has roughly 500 career firefighters and roughly 500 volunteer firefighters. It is in central Maryland and serves over 320,000 citizens. HCFR firefighters did not have access to initial or continuing health and wellness education. The overarching focus of this research was to understand what knowledge, motivation, and organizational factors were needed to develop a health and wellness educational curriculum, and what the solutions to those needs might be. The participants of this study included 47 members of the Bureau of Occupational Safety and Health, which included field and headquarters personnel. A mixed methods research study included document analysis, surveys, and interviews. While HCFR had knowledge, motivation, and organizational assets, development was needed in knowledge and organizational factors for a health and wellness educational curriculum to be developed and delivered. National consideration should be given to record and disseminate what initial and continuing health and wellness education is available to firefighters either from the state training agency, or the fire department.
Fire fighting is a dangerous occupation that is associated with a large amount of physical fitness, education, nutrition and overall wellness. Volunteer fire fighters participate in fire occupation at less frequent intervals and require more physical activity to be able to perform fire related tasks such as hose lays, ladder placement, patient rescue, efficiently. Physical activity plays a vital role in achieving the fitness required to perform fire related tasks and using behavioral modification is used promote increased time being physically active. This was an experimental single subject research design that used exercise logs, implementation worksheets to log activity and inactivity minutes over the course of a 12 week period of time. Subjects were screened for health risks using the ACSM physical activity readiness questionnaire. Information recorded on exercise logs and implementation intention worksheets were used in order to establish how much time the subjects were spending being active or inactive. Activity was classified using the metabolic equivalent of task (MET) and any exercise that was 3.5-10 MET was classified as appropriate exercise that could be recorded. To help classify exercise further, a compendium of exercise containing MET examples was given to both of the study participants. There were two volunteer fire fighter subjects in the study and both completed the 12 week experimental period. The major finding of this study was that using preintentional motivation, a behavioral modification technique; one could increase the amount of activity and reduce the amount of inactivity that a volunteer fire fighter participated in over the course of experimentation. There were two types of preintentional movtivation used in this study. Treatment B required the usage of implementation intention worksheets in conjunction with an exercise log to keep track of minutes being active or inactive. Treatment C required the usage of implementation intention worksheets, exercise logs and meeting with an exercise professional two times during that experimental phase. Treatment B showed to be more effective when increasing activity minutes and reducing inactivity minutes. With more subjects to test the program and usage of physiological markers such as body fat analysis or weight loss/gain or VO2max testing to assess true physiological gain, more validity to results may more clearly be identified.
