Between April 19 – 30th 2021, UWaterloo Fire Research Labs hosted the largest ever and very successful 13th Virtual International Symposium on Fire Safety Science with over 620 attendees from around the globe! The event began with a week of specialty workshops on topics ranging from Human Behaviour in Fire to Li-ion Battery Fires and including Modelling and Simulation of Fires, Compartment and Timber Structure Fires, Wildland Fires and Smart FireFighting Technology. In the second week, plenaries, awards, scientific paper and poster sessions were distributed across time zones to enable the delegates and presenters to attend a selection of sessions in their time zones with all sessions recorded and loaded to the virtual Symposium platform for viewing at any time.
Through the versatile Pheedloop platform, the UW Host team also set up lots of live interaction and networking opportunities, yoga and stretching breaks by UW Athletics, a gamification competition for attendee engagement, early career researcher and diversity events and an exhibit hall with sponsor booths by industry as well as specialty booths for a fire image competition, profiles of diversity in fire science, tours of Canada and UWaterloo, music breaks and even a Canadian artisan display.
