Dr Rickard Hansen

Dr Rickard Hansen is a researcher and a fire protection engineer, specialising in fire behaviour and fire safety in underground hard rock mines. In 2015, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation on heat release rates of mining vehicles in underground hard rock mines. During Rickard's doctoral studies, he conducted several full-scale fire experiments on mining vehicles in an underground mine.

Rickard has published a large number of papers and reports on the fire behaviour in underground hard rock mines. His research interests are fire dynamics in underground mines, suppression of fires in underground mines, fire and rescue operations underground, smoke spread in underground mines and ignition of solid materials. During 2017, Rickard visited SMI to conduct research on fire suppression in underground mines.

Rickard is currently a fire expert at the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB), specialising in fire and rescue operations as well as fire safety in underground structures/mines. Besides his research activities, Rickard has more than 25 years of experience as a fire officer and a fire protection engineer. He has dedicated the majority of those years to fire and rescue in underground mines as well as the fire safety design of underground mines in several projects in northwestern Europe.

Rickard holds a PhD in Fire Science from the University of Mälardalen (Sweden), a master's degree in fire protection engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (USA) and a master's degree in mathematical modelling from Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden), and a bachelor degree in fire protection engineering from Lund University (Sweden).