Challenges for international standardization during the next decades with respect to the areas of new innovative products and fire safety engineering

The current fire testing and classification system and corresponding tests is mainly based on prescriptive building fire codes. This has certain limitations resulting in restricting the possible use of these tests for performance-based design within fire safety engineering (FSE). It also restricts innovation and cost-efficiency for companies supplying materials/components for buildings and transport systems. The growing use of performance-based fire engineering creates needs for education in the area, and calls for the development of appropriate methods/tools to support that change. In the beginning fire safety engineering was mainly used for fire performance based design of buildings but recently new areas such as marine transport have appeared as new applications for fire safety engineering. So on one hand we have the increasing use of fire safety engineering. On the other hand we have the introduction of new innovative materials and products on the market. While techniques for fire engineering, many of them based on advanced modelling, are rather established for traditional materials and products, it is necessary to investigate how these techniques can be used for newer innovative materials, how traditional fire tests can be used for these techniques and what the need for new tests is. This will be one of the major challenges for future standardisation and is explained in the paper. Despite scattered efforts in Academia and Industry for progress in the area of fire properties simulation, there is also still a strong lack of appropriately trained human resources to push the research base in the field further and building the proper environment for shifting paradigms in technological as well as regulatory terms. An example of such an initiative in Europe is given.