The NFPA Fire & Life Safety Policy Institute has released the 2020 Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem: Year in Review report. This latest edition examines U.S. and international events in the last year including massive wildfires, the Beirut port explosion, and another exterior cladding high-rise fire that highlight how gaps, cracks, and weaknesses in our global fire and life safety system become tragedies. 

The Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem is a framework NFPA developed in 2018 that identifies the components that must work together to minimize risk and help prevent loss, injuries, and death from fire, life, electrical, and other hazards. If any of the components are missing or functioning poorly, calamities happen and the risk to life, property, and economic productivity increases. The NFPA Fire & Life Ecosystem is a key to understanding how decisions made over time can either exacerbate or control these threats to safety.

“The year 2020 threw a lot at the world, but as disruptive as it was, it also provided us with a number of fire and life safety events to learn from,” said Jim Pauley, president and CEO of NFPA. “By looking at these incidents through the lens of the Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem, we not only understand the role fire plays in today’s society, but we can examine the factors that have contributed to a reduction of fires and associated losses, and identify areas where work is still needed.”

Tragic incidents worldwide continue to underscore the need to prioritize fire and life safety in policymaking and invest in a complete fire prevention and protection infrastructure. By examining the events outlined in the Year in Review report, communities can see the fault lines that enabled each calamity and use the examples to help address fractures in their own fire and life safety ecosystems to create safer areas to live.

The free 2020 Year in Review report and related resources, and information about the NFPA Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem, can be found on the NFPA Ecosystem webpage.