The Switzerland-based International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has developed a raft of measures that aim to minimise loss of life in building and vehicle fires.

Standards Australia is on the ISO subcommittee that produced the measures, which provide guidelines to analyse gases from fires, determine the quality of effluent measurements from fire tests and estimate how quickly people are incapacitated by heat and smoke.

“This has been an extraordinary process, co-ordinating the contributions of the world’s relatively few multidisciplinary experts in fire science, toxicology and chemical analysis,” Technical Committee 92 chairman Richard Gann said.

Technical Committee 92 oversees fire safety standards, according to the ISO website.

“Australia is contributing to the development of the ISO documents through Standards Australia,” an ISO spokesman told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “The adoption of the ISO standards will ultimately be a matter for the state and territory governments that regulate in this area.”

Standards Australia is a non-profit body for the development of standards that are published as voluntary documents.