Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Various standards and regulations are used in building fire safety design and management for life safety and property protection. These regulations, standards are stated in the code of practice, building codes, guideline enforced by various professional bodies and government authorities. Most of these regulations and standards on fire safety were derived from past experiences on building design and fire fighting, some kinds of scientific analysis, engineering judgment and in some cases, input from manufacturers of building materials, components and even testing authorities. Though such regulations can provide a certain guideline for fire safety design and fire safety management in traditional buildings, but might not be applicable to new architectural features. These regulations might even provide wrong information to the occupants inside the protected building. Therefore, fire engineering approach is proposed for future fire safety design. There, building fire risk analysis becomes an important tool in providing fire safety. Moreover, it can also provide information of the potential risk to the occupants. There are two objectives in this paper. The first is to review the available statistical data related to fire in Hong Kong. The data for fire accidents and number of false alarms recorded in the past few years are analyzed. The second objective is to express the preliminary views on building fire risk analysis for Hong Kong, in views of the statistical analysis. This came from a brief review exercise on the different risk analysis techniques available in the literature.