234 - Building a fire safety culture with George Boustras

Today we sit down with safety science leader George Boustras - a professor at European University Cyprus, UNESCO Chair in Disaster Risk Reduction and Societal Safety in South East Mediterranean and founder of Centre of Excellence in Risk & Decision Sciences (CERIDES). With George we try to examine fire engineering from the wider safety lens, exploring why culture—not just compliance—decides outcomes.We unpack a practical definition of safety as managed risk and follow the hard-earned lessons from Bradford City, King’s Cross, and Piper Alpha to today’s performance-based thinking. George explains why engineering effort should focus where complexity and uncertainty truly demand it, and why modeling without common sense leads to false confidence. We dive into real-world behavior in tunnels, the gap between ASET/RSET and what people do under stress, and how a strong safety culture aligns design, operations, and maintenance across a building’s life.The conversation tackles urgent risks that don’t fit old patterns: lithium-ion battery fires in dense urban housing, micromobility charging in corridors, and emerging wildfire exposure in regions with little prior experience. We outline what works—education that starts early and persists, firm rules with clear roles for citizens, measurable campaigns, and system-level discipline. Borrowing from occupational safety, we highlight safety cases, annual risk assessments, and psychosocial insights that improve decision-making. And we spotlight the “fire scenario” as a powerful, testable playbook for how alarms, fans, dampers, and doors should behave, creating a living matrix for commissioning and maintenance.If you care about moving beyond checklists to safety that holds up under pressure, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review with your biggest safety culture challenge—we’ll feature the most compelling ideas in a future episode.Learn more about CERIDES at https://cerides.euc.ac.cy/----The Fire Science Show is produced by the Fire Science Media in collaboration with OFR Consultants. Thank you to the podcast sponsor for their continuous support towards our mission.