The Mini-Symposium entitled" Fire Safety Design of Buildings and Fire Safety Engineering" was held at Building Research Institute, Ministry of Construction, on 12 June, 1995, as a conjunct program with the Eighth Regular Meeting of the FORUM for International Cooperation in Fire Research. The FORUM for International Cooperation in Fire Research, an international forum of the managers of fire laboratories, meets every year in one of the three regions of the world active in fire research, American Continent, Asia-Oceania and Europe, with a cycle of three years to go around the globe. Its eighth meeting was hosted in Japan jointly by Building Research Institute and Fire Research Institute, Fire Defense Agency, from 13 to 14 June, 1995. Mini-symposium on fire safety engineering has been a customary event of annual meetings of the FORUM to stimulate communication and interaction between the FORUM members and fire experts in the hosting country of the FORUM meeting, and this particular Mini-Symposium was organized by Building Research Institute, Fire Research Institute and the FORUM.

There were over 100 participants in total from Canada, Finland, Italy, Japan, Norway, P.R.China, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan-China and U.S.A. including several non-FORUM member foreign participants, and there were seven invited speakers from fire research and fire safety design community in Japan and FORUM members. The two presentations by FORUM members reported the latest trends in fire safety engineering in the world. The two presentations by fire safety designers in Japan delivered recent examples of the fire safety engineering applications in construction projects in Japan. The editors would like to note that, even in Japan, such detail of fire safety design of construction projects is seldom reported at open symposia. The three presentations by Japanese fire researchers from Building Research Institute and Fire Research Institute discussed the progress in the methodology and research in fire safety engineering and its reflection in the risk assessment in Japan. Also, discussion is believed to be an essential part of the Mini-Symposium in view of its original spirit for the promotion of international communications on fire, and summary of the discussions during the Mini-Symposium could be a good help for better understanding of the content of the Mini-Symposium especially for those who did not have a chance to participate in the Mini-Symposium. This proceedings contains all technical reports presented at the Mini-Symposium, the opening and closing addresses by the representatives of the hosting organizations, and summary of the discussions. Some of the reports have been revised by the offer of respective authors to incorporate more accurate information after the Mini-Symposium. The summary of the discussions are essentially based on the records prepared by Dr.Y.Matsubara and Dr.T.Yamada of Fire Research Institute, and Dr.I.Nakaya and Dr.Y.Hayashi of Building Research Institute. The editors also wish to acknowledge assistance of Dr.L.Kong, an STA Fellow at BRI, for the preparation of the discussion record.

Yuji Hasemi and Yoshihiko Hayashi, Editors
Building Research Institute