Use of Statistical Data in Fire Engineering Design – an International Comparison

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Use of Statistical Data in Fire Engineering Design – an International Comparison

Journal Title: Zeszyty Naukowe SGSP - Year 2015, Vol 0, Issue

Abstract

Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is increasingly being used as a technique to measure risk within fire safety engineering analyses of building designs. PRAs are reliant on good quality, up-to-date, statistical data. Data is published in various formats in different jurisdictions around the world and a British Standard was published in 2003 that collated statistics relevant to fire incidents, injury and deaths, specifically for use in PRAs. This paper makes an international comparison by, firstly, looking at fire safety engineering within the United Kingdom and within the Slovak Republic. It outlines the fire safety regimes in the two jurisdictions describing how they have evolved over recent decades, and discusses how trends are changing from sole use of prescriptive codes towards more prevalent use of performance-based methods- environments where PRAs are most useful. After discussing how the British Standard shows statistical data, and questioning whether the data remains current, the paper then presents updated statistics based on the most recently available data in both the UK and the Slovak Republic. Comparisons between the data are drawn and discussed, along with limitations of the study. The paper concludes that data relating to fire frequency, fire injury and fire death alter over time, and that data are quite specific to the country of origin. For fire safety engineering PRA studies to be meaningful, the most up-to-date data, and data relevant to the jurisdiction under consideration must be sought. Keywords:

Authors and Affiliations

Vladimir MOZER, Peter WILKINSON, Piotr Tofiło

Keywords

Fire safety engineering Buildings structures & design Risk & probability analysis

EP ID EP362597
DOI -
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