The following Plenary Lectures will be given:

Fire Modeling - Where are we now, and where are we going?
Kevin McGrattan, NIST, Gaithersburg MD, USA

Sleep and Fire: Who is at risk and can the risk be reduced?
Dorothy Bruck, Centre for Environmental Safety and Risk Engineering, Victoria University of Technology, AUSTRALIA

Fire Retardant Polymer Materials: New Perspectives
Giovani Camino, Polytechnic of Turin, ITALY

Progress of Fundamental Fire Research In China
Fan Weicheng, State Key Laboratory of Fire Science, USTC; Center for Public Safety Research, Tsinghua University, CHINA

Structures in Fire, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Jean-Marc Franssen, Institute of Civil Engineering, University of Liege, BELGIUM

Fire Risk Analysis: Its Validity and Potential for Application in Fire Safety
Ai Sekizawa, University of Tokyo, JAPAN

At the 8th International Symposium, papers and posters will be presented in all areas of fire safety science. The technical program will be drawn up by the Program Committee under the chairmanship of Dr C L Beyler (Hughes Associates Inc.). The best papers and posters will be selected from more than 300 that have been submitted, in the following subject categories:

Dr. C.L. Beyler, Chairman
Prof. O. Sugawa, Co-Chair

Fire Physics [Committee members: Prof Y Hasemi (Japan), Dr N A Dembsey (USA) and Dr J L Torero (UK)] – including: flame spread, fire growth, compartment fires, radiative and convective heat transfer in fires, fluid dynamics of fire, CFD modeling, wildfires, post-earthquake fires, explosion

Fire Chemistry [Committee members: Dr Margaret Simonson (Sweden) and Dr Richard Hull (UK)] – including: ignition, smoke generation, soot, kinetics, toxicity, self-heating to ignition, control of heat release rate

Human Behavior [Committee members: Dr G Proulx (Canada) and Dr K E Boyce (UK)] – including: human factors, response patterns, egress design, learned irrelevance, exit velocities, special needs

Risk Assessment, Performance-based Design, and Statistics [Committee members: Dr A Sekizawa (Japan) and Dr D Yung (Australia)– including: quantitative risk assessment, hazard evaluation, reliability, performance- based design, statistical analysis

Structural Response and Design [Committee members: Dr J Milke (USA), Dr J-M Franssen (Belgium) and Prof A Buchanan (New Zealand)] – including: compartmentalization, fire response, protection of steel, concrete and wooden components

Suppression, Detection, and Smoke Management [Committee members: Dr R Roby (USA), Dr A Hamins (USA) and Dr T Tanaka (Japan)] – including: detector design, suppression agents, halon replacement, smoke control, sprinkler research

Special topics [Committee members: Prof J Quintiere (USA) and Dr H N Phylaktou (UK)] – including: fire investigation, fire reconstruction, fire service needs, transportation fires, industrial fires