Advancing Fire Safety

Purpose

The Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI), part of UL Research Institutes advances fire safety knowledge to address the world’s unresolved fire safety risks and emerging dangers. As part of UL Research Institutes, we are committed to sharing our fire safety insights with everyone to advance UL’s public safety mission of providing safe living and working environments for people everywhere. 

Through advanced fire science, rigorous research, extensive outreach and education in collaboration with our international network of partners, we impart stakeholders with the information, tools and resources that enable them to make better, more fire-safe decisions that ultimately save lives and property.

Approach

Since 1894, UL has objectively researched safety issues and evaluated products to address fire, shock and casualty risk. It is from this commitment to safety science and a desire to help others that FSRI was born as UL Firefighter Safety Research Institute in 2013 with the purpose of increasing firefighter knowledge to reduce injuries and deaths in the fire service and in the communities they serve. 

Collaboration with the fire service is the foundation of our body of work to date. We have historically focused on fire dynamics, fire service tactics and strategies in residential, commercial and industrial structures through full-scale testing, field testing, modeling and sharing information through online and classroom education. Many of our staff have both served as firefighters or fire investigators and earned advanced degrees in science and engineering fields.

Realizing a growing need, FSRI and our partners have begun to extend beyond fire dynamics to examine factors affecting firefighter health and safety, to work with the fire investigation community and to help fire and life safety educators share data-driven public safety education with their communities. 

This mini documentary shares the history of FSRI from the origin of UL’s fire research efforts to a growing team that is continually expanding to address the world’s unresolved fire safety risk and emerging dangers.

Looking ahead, FSRI’s expansion will continue as we aim to address fire safety more broadly. This means enhancing our capabilities by building on our existing talent to bring in team members with expertise in new areas of research and amplification. We are expanding our physical footprint to include more laboratory, workshop and educational spaces. And we are delving into expanded research topics such as wildland urban interface and materials thermal decomposition. 

In line with this expanded focus and purpose, in July 2021 we made the strategic decision to evolve the logo and name of our organization to the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI), part of UL Research Institutes. Our partnership with the fire service will remain at the core of our work, continuing and growing to address the enduring hazards they face. We also extended our collaborative model to actively engage other stakeholder groups including fire investigators, fire safety engineers, academia, government, industry, safety educators and the public. 

FSRI’s work is funded through grants and the business activities of UL Research Institutes.