European Fire Safety Alliance helps EU Commission with research on comparable fire safety data

The European Commission decided last year to do research for closing the fire safety data gaps and to pave the way for Pan-European fire safety efforts. Because there is a lack of statistics about fires in the European Union. Many countries do keep record about their fires, but not in an unambiguous way. This is due to the fact that there is not an international coordination between the way the data is collected or registered. As a result of this lack of coordination, it is not even known how many people annually die from fires in the European Union. There are estimates available, but these vary widely from an estimate of 4.000 deaths to 8.000 deaths as result of a fire annually.

To learn from each other
In order to make it possible to learn from each other, there is really a need for reliable and comparable information about, for example, the ‘causes of fires’. It’s very important and necessary to create an unambiguous way, which can be used in every country. That’s why EuroFSA is already for quite some time in conversation about the need for comparable data with both the Members of the European Parliament as the European Commission. In order to support this need, the European Fire Safety Alliance conducted in collaboration with the IFV two researches, wherein fatal domestic fires in nine European countries have been mapped. This not only showed, but also proofed, the importance and added value of these kind of data.

Uniform approach
Partly due to the efforts made by European Fire Safety Alliance, the European Parliament has now decided to make the European Commission conduct research about fire statistics. This research will show in which way the European Member states, Norway, The UK, Canada, America and Australia collect data about fires. Based on this research, three proposals for a uniform approach within the European Union are being created. Every proposal consists of a costs/benefit analysis, a few case studies and the contribution to improving the fire safety in the European Union.

Consortium
Under the leadership of Efectis, The European Fire Safety Alliance has registered for this assignment in a consortium. The project will start on July 1st and will run for at least 17 months, with a team consisting of 6 experts working at the IFV, in the area of data-collection, data-analysis and fire prevention. This research will be led by EuroFSA core group member René Hagen to execute the EuroFSA part of the research.