The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) honored several individuals and organizations for their outstanding contributions to fire safety at the NFPA Stars at Night awards ceremony during the annual NFPA Conference & Expo® (C&E) in Orlando on June 16, 2024.
The event recognized leaders in various categories, highlighting their commitment to advancing fire and life safety standards globally.
Dubai Civil Defense was awarded the inaugural NFPA Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem Global Influencer Award.
This award recognizes exceptional commitment to advancing safety through the principles of the NFPA Fire & Life Safety Ecosystem™.
Major General Jamal Bin Adeith Almehairi, Assistant Director General of Dubai Civil Defense, accepted the award on behalf of the organization and its leader, Lieutenant General Rashid Thani Al Matrooshi.
Their integration of cutting-edge technologies, rigorous training programs, and proactive community outreach has significantly elevated fire and life safety standards in Dubai and globally.
Tonya Hoover, Deputy Administrator of the United States Fire Administration (USFA), received the 2024 James M. Shannon Advocacy Medal.
This medal recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding advocacy in promoting fire safety for the general public and the fire service.
Hoover’s career began as a junior firefighter and has included roles such as California State Fire Marshal.
She has been a steadfast advocate for home fire sprinklers in California and a relentless champion for fire safety issues nationwide.
The project on Validating Cleaning Procedures for Firefighter Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was awarded the 2024 Fire Protection Research Foundation Medal.
This project, funded by a Department of Homeland Security/FEMA Assistance to Firefighters Grant, focused on identifying persistent contaminants from the fireground and validating cleaning methods to protect firefighter health and safety.
The project contributed important updates to NFPA 1851, Standard on Selection, Care, and Maintenance of Protective Ensembles for Structural Fire Fighting and Proximity Fire Fighting.
The project team included Jeff Stull, Crystal Forester, Jay Tarley, and Marni Schmid.
William E. Peterson, senior vice president at Strategic Government Resources, was awarded the 2024 Standards Medal for his nearly six decades of work in fire and emergency management.
Peterson’s involvement with NFPA dates back to 1977, and his extensive career includes roles as a volunteer firefighter, fire chief, and FEMA Region 6 Administrator.
He has made significant contributions to the development of NFPA codes and standards and continues to be actively involved with the organization.
The article “Recurrent Convolutional Deep Neural Networks for Modeling Time-Resolved Wildfire Spread Behavior” was awarded the 2024 Harry C. Bigglestone Award.
This prestigious award is given annually to the paper appearing in the journal Fire Technology that best represents excellence in communicating fire protection concepts.
The paper’s authors, John Burge, Matthew Bonanni, Lily Hu, and Matthias Ihme, were recognized for their use of advanced machine learning techniques to create a model that predicts wildfire spread with significant accuracy.
Their research advances the field of fire science and helps ensure better preparedness against wildfires.
