Responding to the dire shortage of fire safety experts in fire engineering internationally, and especially in sub-Saharan Africa, FireSUN has launched a dedicated postgraduate degree programme in fire safety engineering. It’s the first of its kind on the African continent.

Walls has sought assistance from other universities to rapidly develop research expertise in various fire safety fields. He now guides students and post-doctoral students in studying topics such as the behaviour of 3D-printed concrete and Ecobricks, fire spread in informal settlements, and structural design for robustness during fires.

He works closely with local and provincial fire services to reduce informal settlement fire hazard, and has played a leading role in cross-disciplinary analyses of the 2017 Knysna Fire disaster. His ground-breaking work in understanding fire spread in informal and semi-formal communities resulted in a fire safety engineering guideline, which is nearing completion. He also contributed to the United Nations “Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction” which looks at how to mitigate the effect of disasters on society.

Walls has secured support from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation under the “Fire Engineering Education for Africa” grant. This allowed a formalised fire safety education programme to be established, and is now also assisting other African universities.

“Ultimately our biggest contribution to society will be producing engineers with the skills and knowledge to protect Africa from the devastating effects of fire, whether that be in mining, urban, wildland, industrial and informal settlement settings,” Walls says. “Hopefully, my ‘arsonist tendencies’ may rub off on many talented young individuals — and some older ones too — who can then have an impact in our industry.” — Kerry Haggard

To read the full Mail & Guardian supplement of articles about the work of all the 2020 Award Winners, click here.