scholarly journals Recommendation of tests for assessing flame spread of materials in Hong Kong

2007 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-66
Author(s):  
Wan Chow ◽  
Wai Leung
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Flame Spread ◽  
Fire Safety ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Performance Based Design ◽  
Building Fire ◽  
Engineering Approach ◽  
Fire Engineering ◽  
Standard Tests

Performance-based design for passive building fire safety provisions is accepted by the authority in Hong Kong since 1998. This is also known as the "fire engineering approach", though the performance-based fire code is not yet available. To cope with the use of new building materials, appropriate flame spread tests on materials and components should be specified. After reviewing four standard tests in the literature, i.e. ASTM E1321-97a, BS476: Part 7: 1997, ASTM E84-99/NFPA 255, and ISO 9705: 1993(E), it appears that ISO 9705: 1993(E) is suitable for assessing the flame spread of materials. .

scholarly journals Risk Index Method–A Tool for Sustainable, Holistic Building Fire Strategies

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 4469
Author(s):  
Dorota Brzezińska ◽  
Paul Bryant
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Risk Index ◽  
Safety Engineering ◽  
Safety Factors ◽  
Index Method ◽  
Engineering Approach ◽  
Actual Application ◽  
Fire Engineering ◽  
Environmental Objectives

Modern fire safety engineering seeks to ensure buildings are safe from fire by applying optimum levels of fire safety and protection resources without the need to overprotect. Similarly, the principles of sustainability aim to ensure resources are suitably applied to meet social, economic, and environmental objectives. However, there is a mismatch between the actual application of fire safety and the sustainability objectives for buildings, typically caused by the highly prescriptive historical approaches still largely adopted and legislated for in many countries. One solution that is increasingly adopted is the more flexible, “performance-based” fire engineering approach that bases fire safety and protection provisions on the development of key performance objectives, some of which could be influenced by sustainability engineering propositions for buildings, but very often this does not appear to be enough. The proposed new concept prompts separate assessment and scoring of the eight most important fire safety factors, allowing for calculation of the fire strategy risk index (FSRI). By comparing the FSRI of the actual submitted strategy against the baseline strategy, enforcement agencies or other interested stakeholders will have a methodology to determine optimal fire safety solutions for buildings.

scholarly journals Sensitivity and Uncertainty Analyses of Human and Organizational Risks in Fire Safety Systems for High-Rise Residential Buildings with Probabilistic T-H-O-Risk Methodology

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 2590
Author(s):  
Samson Tan ◽  
Darryl Weinert ◽  
Paul Joseph ◽  
Khalid Moinuddin
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Fire Risk ◽  
Regulatory Regime ◽  
High Rise ◽  
Fire Engineering ◽  
Verification Methods ◽  
Uncertainty Analyses ◽  
Risk Methodology ◽  
Probabilistic Risk

Given that existing fire risk models often ignore human and organizational errors (HOEs) ultimately leading to underestimation of risks by as much as 80%, this study employs a technical-human-organizational risk (T-H-O-Risk) methodology to address knowledge gaps in current state-of-the-art probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) for high-rise residential buildings with the following goals: (1) Develop an improved PRA methodology to address concerns that deterministic, fire engineering approaches significantly underestimate safety levels that lead to inaccurate fire safety levels. (2) Enhance existing fire safety verification methods by incorporating probabilistic risk approach and HOEs for (i) a more inclusive view of risk, and (ii) to overcome the deterministic nature of current verification methods. (3) Perform comprehensive sensitivity and uncertainty analyses to address uncertainties in numerical estimates used in fault tree/event trees, Bayesian network and system dynamics and their propagation in a probabilistic model. (4) Quantification of human and organizational risks for high-rise residential buildings which contributes towards a policy agenda in the direction of a sustainable, risk-based regulatory regime. This research contributes to the development of the next-generation building codes and risk assessment methodologies.

scholarly journals Evaluation of the Legal Framework for Building Fire Safety Regulations in Spain

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Amaya Osácar ◽  
Juan Bautista Echeverria Trueba ◽  
Brian Meacham
Keyword(s):  
Fire Safety ◽  
Risk Mitigation ◽  
Fire Risk ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Regulatory Framework ◽  
Existing Building ◽  
Building Fire ◽  
Safety Regulations ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Ideal

There is a trend in Europe towards increasing the quality and performance of regulations. At the same time, regulatory failure has been observed in the area of building fire safety regulation in England and elsewhere. As a result, an analysis of the appropriateness of fire safety regulations in Spain is warranted, with the objective being to assess whether a suitable level of fire safety is currently being delivered. Three basic elements must be considered in such analysis: the legal and regulatory framework, the level of fire risk/safety of buildings that is expected and the level which actually results, and a suitable method of analysis. The focus of this paper is creating a legal and regulatory framework, in particular with respect to fire safety in buildings. Components of an ”ideal” building regulatory framework to adequately control fire risk are presented, the existing building regulatory framework is summarized, and an analysis of the gaps between the ideal and the existing systems is presented. It is concluded that the gaps between the ideal and the existing framework are significant, and that the current fire safety regulations are not appropriate for assuring delivery of the intended level of fire risk mitigation.

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