Daniel Nilsson is a Swedish fire-safety engineer whose research centres on how people behave during building and wildfire evacuations. He is Professor of Fire Engineering at the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury (UC; ; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was founded in 1873 as Canterbur ...

in Christchurch, New Zealand, and was head of its Civil and Natural Resources Engineering department from 2021 to 2024. Since 2014 Nilsson has represented Sweden on ISO Technical Committee 92/SC 4 ''Fire safety engineering'', chairing the subcommittee (2014–2022) and, from 2023, convening its working group on human behaviour in fire.

Education

Nilsson was raised in Lund. He earned a B.Sc. in Fire Protection Engineering (2002) and a Ph.D. in Fire-safety Engineering (2009) at

Lund University Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...

, the latter for work on how flashing lights influence evacuees’ choice of exit. Lund University awarded him the title of ''docent'' in 2013.

Career and research

From 2009 to 2018 Nilsson taught at Lund University, directing its Fire-safety Engineering programme from 2013. He joined the University of Canterbury in 2018 as Professor of Fire Engineering. Nilsson’s research blends full-scale evacuation trials, virtual-reality studies and computer models to improve signage, way-finding and agent-based egress simulations. He heads the BRANZ-funded project “Changing evacuation behaviour to meet densified housing needs” (2023–2025) and contributes to New Zealand’s MBIE programme “Extreme Wildfire: Our new reality” (2021–2026) as well as a

NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...

GPS-tracking study of wildfire evacuations. Within ISO he helped draft ISO 20414:2020, the first international protocol for verifying and validating building-fire evacuation models.

Selected works

* Nilsson, D. ''Exit Choice in Fire Emergencies – Influencing Choice of Exit with Flashing Lights''. Ph.D. thesis, Lund University, 2009.

Honours

Nilsson received Lund University’s “Teacher of the Year” award in Fire-safety Engineering in 2015 and 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nilsson, Daniel Swedish engineers Academic staff of the University of Canterbury Lund University alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people)