Quantitative Assessment of Building Fire Risk to Life Safety

Abstract

This article presents a quantitative risk assessment framework for evaluating fire risk to life safety. Fire risk is divided into two parts: probability and corresponding consequence of every fire scenario. The time-dependent event tree technique is used to analyze probable fire scenarios based on the effect of fire protection systems on fire spread and smoke movement. To obtain the variation of occurrence probability with time, Markov chain is combined with a time-dependent event tree for stochastic analysis on the occurrence probability of fire scenarios. To obtain consequences of every fire scenario, some uncertainties are considered in the risk analysis process. When calculating the onset time to untenable conditions, a range of fires are designed based on different fire growth rates, after which uncertainty of onset time to untenable conditions can be characterized by probability distribution. When calculating occupant evacuation time, occupant premovement time is considered as a probability distribution. Consequences of a fire scenario can be evaluated according to probability distribution of evacuation time and onset time of untenable conditions. Then, fire risk to life safety can be evaluated based on occurrence probability and consequences of every fire scenario. To express the risk assessment method in detail, a commercial building is presented as a case study. A discussion compares the assessment result of the case study with fire statistics.

Protecting Built Property Against Fire Disasters: Multi ‐attribute Decision Making With Respect to Fire Risk

“…the major objective of the performance-based design is to achieve satisfactory level of fire safety to the occupants and fire brigade personnel. Levels of fire safety (or, alternatively, fire risk) are assessed by applying risk assessment, either qualitative or quantitative (guanquan and Jinhua, 2008;yung, 2008;hasofer et al, 2007). the latter is widely denoted by the acronym qra intro-duced above.…”

A Brief Look at Data on the Reliability of Sprinklers Used in Conventional Buildings / Trumpa Duomenų Apie Įprastiniuose Pastatuose Įrengtų Sprinklerių Patikimumą Apžvalga

“…When applied in combination with another protective systems (e.g. fire alarm), sprinklers can considerably reduce the risk posed by fires (e.g., Melinek 1993a, b;Rasbash et al 2004;Guanquan and Jinhua 2008;Vaidogas and Juocevičius 2008a, b;Chow and Chow 2009;Gałaj 2009;Hola 2007Hola , 2006Hola , 2009aHola , b, 2010Konecki and Półka 2009;Vaidogas 2003Vaidogas , 2006Vaidogas , 2009Zavadskas and Vaidogas 2009;Lai et al 2010;Vaidogas and Šakėnaitė 2010). Unfortunately, another obvious fact is that sprinkler systems are not fail-safe technical objects.…”

Application of Industrial Risk Management Practices to Control Natural Hazards, Facilitating Risk Communication

“…QRA is also widely used for chemical process risk assessment, and it is a regulatory requirement in many countries for planning new facilities and for operational changes [50]. QRA has also been extensively adopted for analyzing construction safety, the fire safety of buildings, food safety, and so on [51][52][53].…”