The mission of the building and fire research programs at NIST is to anticipate and meet the measurement science, standards, and technology needs of the U.S. building and fire safety industries in areas of critical national need. Strategic goals include net-zero energy high-performance buildings, advancing infrastructure delivery and improving construction productivity through information integration and automation technologies, sustainable infrastructure materials, innovative fire protection, and disaster-resilient structures and communities, which includes work on hurricanes, earthquakes, and fires. NIST has specific statutory responsibilities for fire prevention and control, earthquake hazards reduction, windstorm impact reduction, and building and fire safety investigations.

During 2002-2007, SKLFS cooperated with Building and Fire Research Portal in the research on high-rise building fire safety. In 2011, SKLFS cooperated with Building and Fire Research Portal to apply for Major International (Regional) Joint Research Project entitled "Research on Key Scientific Issues Concerning Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Safety", and has been approved by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. The Abstract of this project is:

Nowadays, Wildland-Urban Interface Fire (WUI fire) has become a global serious issue. The project seeks to deeply understand WUI fire behaviors and mechanisms essential for WUI fire safety engineering, by collaborations among State Key Laboratory of Fire Science (China), Chinese Academy of Forestry (China), NIST Engineering Laboratory (USA), Institute of Chemical Kinetics and Combustion (Russia) and Building Material Engineering Laboratory (Japan). It first studies the mechanisms and characteristics of large-scale flame radiation and spot fire in WUI fires. The ignitability of building materials by flame radiatin or fire brands will be then investigated. Further, the glass breakage behaviors by WUI fires and the effect of wind on enclosure fire dynamics will be explored. Based on these, the global WUI fire propagation models and human evacuation models will be developed. The project provides innovative knowledge for WUI fire safety design and fire emergency.