This presentation will briefly discuss the EXODUS evacuation and SMARTFIRE fire simulation software
and recent FSEG research projects including: evacuation of high-rise buildings using lifts, urban-scale
evacuation modelling, the impact of security bollards on evacuation, improving wayfinding in complex
buildings, human behaviour in domestic fire situations and coupled fire and evacuation simulation.
The seminar will be followed by the announcement of the European Horizon 2020 Project GEO-SAFE
(Geospatial based Environment for Optimisation Systems Addressing Fire Emergencies) we recently won,
with 10 European Partners and 3 Australian partners. It will be the opportunity to exchange about the
possibility, for any interested person to contribute to the project in Australia.
The seminar and the project are both designed to foster exchanges between researchers and
representatives from end-users organisations, in particular fire-fighting organisations.
About the speaker
Professor Galea is the founding director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG –
http://fseg.gre.ac.uk) of the University of Greenwich in London where he has worked in the area of
Computational Fire Engineering (CFE) research since 1986. FSEG are developers of the EXODUS suite
of evacuation and crowd dynamics software and the SMARTFIRE fire simulation software, which have
users in 35 countries around the world. His personal research interests include human behaviour in
emergency evacuation situations, crowd dynamics, evacuation and crowd dynamics simulation, fire
dynamics and CFD fire simulation. His research has applications to the building, aviation, maritime and rail
industries. As director of FSEG he manages the research activities of 30 full-time psychologists, fire
engineers, CFD specialists, computer scientists and mathematicians.He is the author of over 300 academic and professional publications, the vice chair of the International
Association of Fire Safety Science and serves on a number of standards committees concerned with fire
and evacuation for organisations such as; IMO, ISO, BSI and the SFPE Task Group on Human Behaviour
in Fire. He has served on several major Inquires and legal cases as an expert in fire and evacuation
including: the Paddington Rail Crash, the Swiss Air MD11 crash, and the Admiral Duncan Pub bombing.
He has worked as a consultant for organisations such as; Airbus, Bombardier, British Airways, Royal Navy,
UK Home Office, Centre for Protection of National Infrastructure, Arup Transportation, Buro Happolds, US
Federal Rail Administration, US Dept of Defence, DSTO, Hughes Inc, Battelle Inc, Mitsubishi, Fujitsui, etc.
He has extensive experience in designing and running large-scale evacuation experiments and drills. He
has successfully evacuated, without incident, many thousands of people, from a variety of enclosures
including, large buildings, aircraft, trains, passenger ships at sea (the largest with over 2000 passengers),
and a large 20 floor construction site in central London.
He has won a number of awards for his work including; 2001 British Computer Society Gold Medal, 2002
Queen’s Anniversary prize, 2006 Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Award; 2013 Royal Institution of Naval
Architects Medal of Distinction and the 2014 The Guardian University Award for Research Impact. He is
an associate editor of the “Royal Aeronautical Journal” and open access journal ‘Fire Science Reviews’.
He is a Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers and Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.
How to participate in this seminar:
1. Book your nearest ACE facility;
2. Notify Marc Demange at RMIT (marc.demange@rmit.edu.au) to notify you will be participating.
No access to an ACE facility? Contact Maaike Wienk to arrange a temporary Visimeet licence for remote access (limited number of licences available – first come first serve)