The Investigation of origin, cause and development of fires is a critical issue for the design and development of a safer built environment, in understanding how people behave when confronted with a fire and in being able to develop appropriate fire investigation skills which will provide a service to the criminal and civil courts. The development of a collective strategic approach to fire incident resolution across the stakeholder communities and the cross fertilisation of industrial and academic research facilitated by interaction and agreement of common goals will be an enormous benefit which we aim to achieve from the SUII sponsored events. Collaborative fire scene investigations are capable of providing reliable information which will facilitate the understanding of the effect of fire related incidents on the built environment and on human behaviour in fire and, as a, consequence will inform the development of safer communities. The cross fertilisation of industrial and academic research across the various stakeholder communities facilitated by interaction and the agreement of common goals will also be an enormous benefit.

Three two day workshops addressing critical and interlinked themes will be held at SUII during the program covering:

• Fire scene investigation and the development of a multidisciplinary approach.
• Critical issues in the investigation of fatal fires
• Building better investigative teams: training, knowledge transfer and assessment of competence in fire investigation

Overall Terms of Reference for the workshops

• Establish the nature and extent of the stakeholder community and how the interaction between the different spheres involved in fire investigation occurs and is managed.
• Establish the extent to which scientific and forensic evidence is used in criminal and civil trials relating to fire investigation and in particular the investigation of fatal fires.
• Establish the requirements for efficient and effective investigations and the barriers that need to be overcome to achieve these in terms of training, research and knowledge exchange.