A Request for FDS/Smokeview Feedback

["Kevin McGrattan" <kevin.mcgrattan@nist.gov>]

All

I have a request for everyone receiving this email. First, some background. Recently, the leader of my group at NIST, Anthony 
Hamins, was promoted to the position of Chief of the Fire Research Division. There are three divisions within the Building and Fire 
Research Lab at NIST (the other two are Materials and Construction, and Building Enviroment, respectively). As a result of Anthony's 
promotion, I have taken over our group within the division, currently named "Analysis and Prediction." There are five groups within 
the division. The group is relatively small, and is focussed on fire modeling, FDS and Smokeview in particular, with a relatively 
new thrust aimed at addressing wildland fires within FDS/SV. This effort is headed by Ruddy Mell and Alex Maranghides. Most of you 
have not heard of this effort because the code has not been publicly released even though work is on-going to incorporate various 
algorithms into the main version.

I am telling you this because as the leader of the group, I will be asked by my management and by external review panels from time 
to time to produce proof of our group's "impact." There are a variety of options -- our on-line support tools, downloads, discussion 
threads, web statistics, etc., journal and conference papers, both our own and those of others; educational programs of the SFPE, 
NFPA Research Foundation projects, daily accounts of model use over a wide range of applications, from design to forensics.  I like 
to think that these are all, collectively, indicators of  "impact." But it is difficult to boil it all down into a tidy bundle that 
can be presented to a group of people who are not necessarily familiar with the fire protection engineering, fire research, and fire 
service communities. In fact, although we do get lots of daily feedback from the user base, we still don't have a simple answer to 
the question "How many people use FDS and Smokeview?" I guess there is no simple answer, as some people use the model every day, 
some only once in a while.  Some use it commercially, some for academic reasons, some just for fun (God love you!).  Even if we did 
have a number, we still would like to understand better just what you all do with this model.

This is all leading me towards the request. I would like everyone who is receiving this email (or sees this message posted to the 
Discussion Group) to send two letters, one to each of the following individuals:

Anthony Hamins
Chief, Fire Research Division
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
Mail Stop 8660
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8660
USA

Eva Häkkä-Rönnholm
Vice President, R&D, Materials and Building
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
P.O.Box 1000
FI-02044 VTT
Finland

Note the inclusion of our partners at VTT, Finland.  They are a critical part of the success of our efforts, and they, too, have 
similar demands from their managment to demonstrate the impact of their work. The letters are intended to give us a better idea of 
who the FDS/Smokeview user community is. The letter need only contain a brief description of who you are, and what you do with FDS 
and Smokeview (and those of you who use the NIST zone model CFAST or the VTT Evacuation model, please add a brief note to your 
letter). Letterhead from your organization is useful in pointing out what type of organizations use the model, so that we can better 
direct our research efforts. If you work for a larger organization with multiple model users, please provide at least one letter per 
regional office, with an indication of how many users are in that office, and what the general application is. If you want us to 
focus more on a particular area (evacuation, smoke control, fire spread, etc.) feel free to include a few comments -- but if you 
want to make a specific suggestion, please just post it directly to the Issue Tracker.

This is not a formal survey, and these are not necessarily letters of support. Our funding is not in jeopardy, but I feel it is 
important that we be accountable for how we spend public money if we want to continue receiving public support. After all, we cannot 
expect continued support to develop an engineering model that no one uses. Even if you are not American or Finnish, your 
participation is vital.  The models benefit from the collective daily response we receive from all over the world, and it benefits 
all of us that the physical and numerical models within FDS/Smokeview undergo a daily review by so many knowledgable people.

In the past, I have asked for examples of how you use FDS/Smokeview.  Many graciously responded, and I put together an impressive 
collection of interesting images and projects to show our management and external reviewers.  However, many people opted out, 
explaining to me later that they were either too busy, or considered their work "unworthy."  This time around, I'm afraid I'm going 
to have to be a bit more insistent. No matter who you are, whether you're just a new student or whether you're a daily user, this is 
the price of the software and the support services we provide -- two sheets of paper, two envelops, two stamps, 10 minutes of your 
time.  The result if everybody cooperates, priceless. We absolutely remain committed to developing and improving our models and 
support services; and we are absolutely committed to open source, freely available software.  A mere acknowledgment from each of you 
that you use FDS/Smokeview for whatever reason is the only way to ensure that we can continue doing what we are doing.

Please take just a few minutes to do this right now.  Yes, we're all busy, but this is time well spent.

Thank you.

Kevin


Kevin McGrattan
National Institute of Standards and Technology
100 Bureau Drive, Mail Stop 8663
Gaithersburg MD 20899
Phone: 301 975 2712
Fax:       301 975 4052