This SpringerBrief presents information on a wide variety of hazards and the damage potential caused by installation of a photovoltaic (PV) system. The current installation practices for PV systems on roofs create electrical, fire, structural, and weather-related hazards that do not comply to current codes, standards and guidance documents. Potential dangers include structural loading, wind loads, hail, snow, debris accumulation, seismic hazards, firefighting hazards, and electrical hazards. Despite the increased popularity of PV systems after the environmental movement, research shows that...

This SpringerBrief presents cutting-edge research on an important aspect of smart firefighting which will improve performance, safety, prediction, and resilience. It demonstrates the viability of real-time decision support for smart firefighting and provides validation data for continued cyber-physical system (CPS) development by using a smart networked fire test bed consisting of a multi-story instrumented building, a variety of fire and non-fire networked sensors, and a computational framework anchored by a Building Information Modeling (BIM) representation of the building.
The author...