Silver pinecone for the UGent team in the 2021 Christmas Tree Fire HRR Prediction Competition

In December 2021, the Department of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland hosted the 8th annual competition to predict the burning behaviour (Heat Release Rate - HRR) of a Fraser Fir Christmas tree (https://fpe.umd.edu/burn-competition). This is a friendly competition designed to bring together students, researchers and engineers of the fire science community around the world to share the positive fire safety message “If you have a natural Christmas Tree this season, please keep it well-watered”. The video of the 2020 Christmas Tree Burn can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/Flujblo8pZ0 For the 2021 competition, 92 individual predictions from 37 unique institutions located in 15 countries were submitted. Dr Andrea Lucherini, Mr Jovanovic, Mr Hong, Mr Thielens, Mr At Thabari, and Mr Hong represented Ghent University. The team obtained the second best team score (only 0.2% away from the winner, Korea University) and they received the prestigious “Silver Pinecone” trophy. Congratulations to the UGent team!