http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Research_CouncilUnited States National Research Council
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The National Research Council (NRC) of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the United States National Academy of Engineering, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.
The Research Council is not a membership organization. It was organized in 1916 in response to the increased need for scientific and technical services caused by World War I. Due to the success of Council-directed research in producing a sound-based method of detecting submarines, as well as other military innovations, the NRC was retained at the end of the war, though it was gradually decoupled from the military. The Research Council is currently administered jointly by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, and its work is overseen by a Governing Board and an Executive Committee.
The president of the National Academy of Sciences is the chair of both the Governing Board and Executive Committee; the president of the National Academy of Engineering is vice chair.
Its members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of its committees are chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance. Its reports are reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
The National Research Council is one of the four organizations which comprise the United States National Academies.
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De NRC (usa) valt dus onder United States National Acedemies. Ze hebben geen eigen website maar vallen onder
http://www.nationalacademies.org/ Niets te vinden over fundementeel brand onderzoek...
Wel een geschiedenis van wetenschappelijk brand onderzoek..... van andere organisaties....
Heb je toevallig voorbeelden van brand onderzoek van het NRC USA ?
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10777&page=1Making the Nation Safe from Fire:
A Path Forward in Research
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Executive Summary
The world watched in horror as the towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, demonstrating yet again the devastating destructive power of uncontrolled fire. On February 20, 2003, a nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island, left 99 people dead and more than 150 injured. Not since the 70-year period from 1871 to 1941, during which the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the center of the world market for grain, livestock, and lumber and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire killed hundreds, has the ability of fire to cause damage and harm figured so prominently in the national consciousness. However, to those involved in fire safety, the recent horrific events only reinforce the knowledge that fire is a dangerous and relentless foe, and one that is not fully understood or controllable despite years of effort and countless billions spent on prevention, mitigation, and response.
In 1968 Congress passed the Fire Research and Safety Act, which mandated creation of a National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control (NCFPC) to study the nation’s fire problem. The commission conducted an in-depth study, held hearings throughout the country, and in 1973 submitted its report, America Burning, to the President and Congress. The first page of the report stated as follows: “Appallingly, the richest and most technologically advanced nation in the world [the United States] leads all the major industrialized countries in per capita deaths and property loss from fire” (NCFPC, 1973).
In response to the America Burning report, Congress passed the Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974, which created what is now the United States Fire Administration and the National Fire Academy, currently located within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). This legislation also established the Fire Research Center at the National Bureau of Standards—now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)—thereby providing the basis for the existing program at NIST. As a result of concerted efforts to improve fire safety (particularly the advent of an affordable home smoke detector), residential deaths in the United States have declined since then, but this country continues to sustain unnecessarily high levels of fire-related death and destruction. As part of its strategy to improve fire safety, NCFPC recommended in America Burning that federal funding of fire research be increased by $26 million per year ($113 million in today’s dollars). That recommendation was not implemented.
In the early 1970s, the National Science Foundation (NSF) supported fire research at a level of approximately $2.2 million every year ($9.6 million in today’s dollars) through a program known as Research Applied to National Needs (RANN). The RANN program was terminated in 1977. Subsequently, a fire research grants program at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) was funded at about $2 million annually ($8.7 million in today’s dollars). However, by 2002, the NIST fire research grants program had declined to only $1.4 million, a decrease of 85 percent from the 1973 level when adjusted for inflation. As a consequence of the limited funding that has been made available, the scope and breadth of university fire research in the United States have declined dramatically over the past 30 years.
As in any technical field, the production of advanced degree scholars with specialized expertise and career paths in fire science and engineering is critical to both conducting the needed research and training the next generation of investigators, teachers, and practitioners. Unfortunately, reduced research funding over the past three decades has caused U.S. production of career-directed young men and women who will make and implement the important fire safety discoveries of the future to all but dry up.
In recognition of the slow pace of advancement in the fire safety field, the paucity of basic research, and the small number of universities offering research and training opportunities, NSF asked the National Research Council (NRC) to help it determine how to align its programs and resources to advance fire safety in the United States. The Committee to Identify Innovative Research Needs to Foster Improved Fire Safety in the United States was appointed to plan and conduct a workshop that would survey and assess the current state of knowledge, research, education and training, technology transfer, and deployment of practices and products in the fire safety field. The committee also set out to help define how NSF could marshal the intellectual, financial, and institutional resources of the United States to develop the knowledge necessary to save lives and reduce injuries and property loss from fire. The workshop was held on April 15 and 16, 2002, and attended by more than 50 national and international experts from various disciplines involved in fire safety.
During the course of the workshop, many themes emerged from the perspectives of the different disciplines represented. However, the committee’s overarching conclusion is that there are significant gaps in our knowledge of fire safety science and fire loss mitigation strategies. As a result, the threat posed by fire to people, property, and economic activity is neither well understood nor fully appreciated. The ramifications of these gaps manifest themselves in many ways. For example, the need for a sound and complete knowledge base has never been greater in light of the recent emergence of performance-based codes published by the International Code Council (ICC, 2001) and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA, 2003) and performance-based design practices such as those released by the Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE, 2000). Performance-based codes and design practices provide a real opportunity to make buildings safer at less cost and further open the doors to innovative building systems, devices, and materials. However, current knowledge gaps force engineers and regulatory officials to apply performance-based practices in a climate of significant uncertainty: For instance, could other buildings suffer catastrophic failures like those that occurred on September 11, 2001, at New York’s World Trade Center? In other words, substantial amounts of money continue to be invested in building fire safety features without the benefit of scientifically informed expectations of the resulting safety performance.(...)
