Fire Risk or Fire Hazard as the Basis for Building Fire Safety Performance Evaluation. [Fire Risk or Fire Hazard - Building Fire Safety.]
Fire Risk or Fire Hazard as the Basis for Building Fire
Safety Performance Evaluation. [Fire Risk or Fire
Hazard - Building Fire Safety.]
(748 K)
Bukowski, R. W.
Paper 18;
Institut de Securite. Fire Safety Conference on
Performance Based Concepts. Proceedings. October
15-17, 1996, Zurich, Switzerland, 18/1-10 pp, 1996.
Keywords:
fire safety; fire codes; building codes; standards; life
safety; performance codes; risk assessment; scenarios;
fire risk assessment
Abstract:
Nearly every developed country has committed to the goal
of a performance-based code by early in the next
century. Most have expressed interest in the use of
fire risk assessment as the means to judge performance
against the code's explicit objectives. The fact that
risk can never be eliminated may lead to the public
perception that officials feel a few deaths are somehow
acceptable. Risk of financial loss is easier to
understand but is difficult to apply to life safety
concerns without becoming embroiled in the value of
life. Since a rigorous risk assessment is
computationally intense and requires a vast amount of
historical data that is frequently not collected, most
analyses conducted in support of performance evaluation
are hazard assessments. These measure performance in a
specified set of conditions which are presumed to
represent the principal threats. Since experience has
shown that the worst fires are the result of many things
going wrong together, it is desirable to account for
situations characterized by multiple failures in
providing for the safety of the public. The purpose of
this paper is to identify research issues to be
addressed by international programs such as the CIB W14
Task Group on Engineering Evaluation of Building Fire
Performance.
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899