Scheme for Determining Additional Fire Safety Provisions for Tall Buildings

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-367 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. K. Chow ◽  
W. Y. Hung
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Tall Buildings

Adequacy of Safe Egress Design Codes for Supertall Buildings

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (6) ◽  
pp. 568-580
Author(s):  
Edgar C. L. Pang ◽  
◽  
Wan-Ki Chow
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Fire Safety ◽  
Safety Management ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Emergency Evacuation ◽  
Design Parameters ◽  
Commercial Building ◽  
Evacuation Time ◽  
Normal Heights ◽  
Evacuation Routes

Emergency evacuation for supertall buildings with heights over 200 m require a very long time for occupants to travel down the buildings. Occupants might jam into protected lobbies and staircases, extending the waiting time. There is not yet any code requirement specifically for emergency evacuation in supertall buildings, which are criticized for using the same codes for buildings with normal heights. Further, the evacuation design for several existing supertall buildings does not even follow prescriptive fire-safety codes. The underlying problems have not yet been addressed by thorough studies. Evacuation in such tall buildings in Hong Kong will be studied in this paper. The assumptions made in the local prescriptive codes for safe egress will be justified. Three buildings with evacuation design complying with the local codes are considered as examples. A commercial building, a hotel, and a residential block in Hong Kong are taken as examples. The key design parameters in the local codes are for 40 people evacuating with a flow rate of 1.1 person/s through the staircase between typical floors. The evacuation time from each floor to the protected lobby is assumed to be within 5 min. The evacuation times in different scenarios with these assumptions are calculated. Such assumptions do not hold under a high occupant load. The total evacuation time would be extended significantly when the travelling flows of occupants are blocked in any of the evacuation routes. Different fire-safety management schemes with staged evacuation, such as assigning higher priorities to evacuate lower or upper floors first, are evaluated. The results observed for safe egress are then discussed.

scholarly journals Fire Safety Design for Tall Buildings

2013 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 169-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Cowlard ◽  
Adam Bittern ◽  
Cecilia Abecassis-Empis ◽  
José Torero
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Safety Design ◽  
Fire Safety Design

scholarly journals Building Fire Evacuation: An IoT-Aided Perspective in the 5G Era

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 643
Author(s):  
Hongqiang Fang ◽  
Siuming Lo ◽  
Jacqueline T. Y. Lo
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Building Evacuation ◽  
Smart Building ◽  
Building Fire ◽  
Fire Environment ◽  
Fire Evacuation ◽  
Safety Studies ◽  
Fire Ground

Complex and tall buildings have been constructed in many cities recently. Fire safety should be a major concern of building designers, engineers, and governments. Previous fire experience has made us understand the importance of acquiring fire-ground information to facilitate firefighting operations, evacuation processes, rescues, etc. Recently, the rapid advancement in Information Technology, Data Analytics, and other detection and monitoring systems has provided the basis for fire safety researchers to re-think fire safety strategies in the built environment. Amongst all fire safety studies, evacuation in tall buildings, including elevator evacuations, has attracted much attention. IoT-aided building fire evacuation is a new concept of the building evacuation mode, which improves the building evacuation process by making decisions of escape based on the real-time fire-ground information, such as the fire environment and occupant situations. Focusing on IoT applications in building fire evacuation, this paper explores the advantages and insufficiencies of current smart building fire evacuation systems. A conceptual design of an IoT-aided building fire evacuation control system is described. The system is introduced in the sequence of information needs, information sources and data transmission, and potential services and applications. Finally, new insights into promising 5G technologies for future building fire evacuations are discussed.

scholarly journals Fire safety assessment of super tall buildings: A case study on Shanghai Tower

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 28-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Jiang ◽  
Lingzhu Chen ◽  
Shouchao Jiang ◽  
Guo-Qiang Li ◽  
Asif Usmani
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Safety Assessment ◽  
Tall Buildings

scholarly journals PERILAKU TANGGAP KEBAKARAN PADA BANGUNAN KAMPUS

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-20
Author(s):  
Heru Sufianto ◽  
Agung Murti Nugroho ◽  
M Satya Aditama
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Field Survey ◽  
Safety Management ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Online Questionnaire ◽  
Safety Awareness ◽  
The University ◽  
Active Controls ◽  
Campus Building

Fires in buildings have significant impact on communities both socially and economically. In education facilities, fire incidents may instantly wipe out valuable scientific resources that were collected in years. Fire authorities, practitioners and relevant bodies have been addressed this issue by focusing on technical engineering approaches and requirements, more than human behaviour aspect. This study seeks the importance of human behaviour as pre-active and re-active controls for protecting campus building from fires. Number of tall buildings in Brawijaya University have been investigated and a number of occupants have been filled up the online questionnaire during field survey. This study suggested the improvement fire safety awareness of occupants, meanwhile fire safety management should be introduced and implemented consistently across management system in the university.

Numerical analysis of the effect of external opening on fire safety of refuge floors in tall buildings

2020 ◽  
pp. 1420326X2092625
Author(s):  
K. W. Lau ◽  
T. K. Yue ◽  
W. K. Chow
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Natural Ventilation ◽  
Tall Buildings ◽  
Quantitative Measure ◽  
Safety Level ◽  
Safety Issues ◽  
Safety Parameter ◽  
Fire Safety Design ◽  
Adequate Provision ◽  
Wall Openings

Refuge floors are fire safety requirements for tall buildings in many Asia-Oceania cities. However, there are concerns on the adequate provision of cross-ventilation and drencher system to openings on refuge floors. To review the existing situation, a survey of 44 building developments involving 51 blocks of both residential and non-residential tall buildings was conducted. A new fire safety parameter, i.e. the ratio of external wall openings areas to the nominal total wall areas of refuge floors (wall opening area ratio, or WOAR), was introduced to provide a quantitative measure in analysing fire safety level of tall buildings. To study how the ventilation provision is affected by WOAR, numerical simulations for the effect of natural ventilation on fire growth on the refuge floor were conducted by incorporating the wind data collected from the tallest building in Hong Kong. In the simulations, an office layout was adopted on both upper and lower floors for the sake of illustrating the possible smoke and heat spread from lower floor to upper floor (refuge floor). Finally, fire safety issues in relation to natural ventilation on fire in tall buildings were discussed. Suggestions in improving the fire safety design of tall buildings are proposed.

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