Mr Samuel Stevens

Postgraduate

Research Institute: 

  • Infrastructure and Environment

Research Theme: 

  • Fire Safety Engineering
Sam Stevens

Biography: 

Sam is a PhD student at the Edinburgh Fire Research Centre studying techniques for modelling fire spread in informal urban environments, predominantly in Nairobi, Kenya, with a view to developing fire risk quantification methods. He also has experience using GIS techniques to produce spatial distributions of fire risk in informal settlements in Cape Town.

 

Journal Papers:

S. Stevens, L. Gibson, D. Rush, Conceptualising a GIS-based risk quantification framework for fire spread in informal settlements: A Cape Town case study, Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. (2020). doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2020.101736.

A. Cicione, R. Walls, Z. Sander, N. Flores Quiroz, V. Narayanan, S. Stevens, D. Rush, The effect of separation distance between informal dwellings on fire spread rates based on experimental data and analytical equations, Fire Technol. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-020-01023-8

M. Beshir, K. Omar, F.R. Centeno, S. Stevens, L. Gibson, D. Rush, Experimental and Numerical Study for the Effect of Horizontal Openings on the External Plume and Potential Fire Spread in Informal Settlements, Appl. Sci. 11 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3390/app11052380

A. Cicione, R. Walls, S. Stevens, Z. Sander, N. Flores, V. Narayanan, D. Rush, An experimental and numerical study on the effects of leakages and ventilation conditions on informal settlement fire dynamics, Fire Technol. (2021). http://doi.org/10.1007/s10694-021-01136-8

L. Gibson, A. Cicione, S. Stevens, D. Rush, The influence of wind and the spatial layout of dwellings on fire spread in informal settlements in Cape Town, Comput. Environ. Urban Syst. 91 (2022) doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2021.101734

S. Stevens, D. Rush, External venting flame models: Criticality and challenges of application in a large-scale informal settlement fire spread model, Fire Safety Journal 140 (2023) . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.firesaf.2023.103860

 

Conference papers:

S. Stevens, M. Beshir, D. Rush, CFD as a tool for examining fire spread mechanisms in informal settlements: faster flashover and deflected flames, Asia-Oceania Symposium on Fire Science and Technology. (2021)

 

Articles:

Y. Wang, M. Beshir, L. Gibson, S. Stevens, L. Bisby, D. Rush. How "Informal" is an Informal Settlement Fire? SFPE Europe. 18 (2020).

 

Reviewer credit:

World Bank. Urban FRAME : Urban Fire Regulatory Assessment and Mitigation Evaluation Diagnostic. World Bank, Washington, DC (2020).

Academic Qualifications: 

MEng Structural and Fire Safety Engineering, University of Edinburgh, 2014-2019

Teaching: 

Behaviour and Design of Structures 2
Structural Mechanics 2A
Fire Safety Engineering and Society 5 (IMFSE)
Fire Science and Fire Dynamics 4 (IMFSE)
Fire Safety Engineering 4 (IMFSE)
Professional Development for Engineers 2
Models for Fire Safety 5

 

Research Interests: 

Fire modelling and fire risk quantification for informal urban environments in the developing world.