The IMFSE consortium is very proud and happy to announce that Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) is now one of the IMFSE Full Partner Universities! The inclusion of UPC in IMFSE in August 2021 was already a major step forward for the IMFSE programme, but UPC being a Full Partner University now enables world class education on wildfires and industrial fire protection even more!

Since its inception, the IMFSE curriculum has been developed with a worldwide context of modern Performance-Based Design (PBD) applied to Fire Safety Engineering (FSE). The primary focus has been on the built environment and, to a much lesser extent, industrial fire protection. With Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC, Spain) joining the original consortium of The University of Edinburgh (UoE, UK), Lund University (LU, Sweden) and Ghent University (UGent, Belgium – coordinator) as Full Partner University, the curriculum is extended significantly, strengthening the education on industrial fire protection and introducing wildfires into the IMFSE programme. This will allow the programme to deliver a curriculum which addresses the current and future challenges in Fire Safety Engineering: those related to the fire safety of sustainable low-carbon solutions and new energy sources, and tackling the fundamental issues raised by increased severity and frequency of wildfires due to climate change. Hence, the IMFSE programme is now fully ready to address the three key pillars of the broader field of fire safety (and their interaction): the built environment, industrial fire protection and wildfires. With the inclusion of UPC, the IMFSE programme will also be in the position of addressing the needs related to wildfires and industry fire protection. UPC research and teaching experience within the fields of wildfire dynamics, WUI (Wildland-Urban Interface) fire risk management and fire safety in technological environments during more than 20 years will be key to cover basic and practical knowledge gaps of the current programme, in particular those related to sustainability and climate change adaptation. With programme leaders strongly linked to key agents of the international wildfire management and industrial safety communities, students’ immersion to real challenges will be fostered and a successful transition from academy to specialized professional careers in these emergent topics will be ensured.

More info here.