Safety measures in a building based on average fire severity and average
fire resistance are likely to be less efficient than measures based on extreme
values of these two factors. What is ideally required is a minimum fire
resistance to cope with the maximum fire severity likely to be reached in a
building. The costs and benefits involved in such a degree of safety can
be evaluated later.
This Note, however, is concerned only with the fire resistance of a
structural element. The statistical properties of the minimum fire
resistance could be studied with the aid of data from a small number of tests.
Such an analysis would require, the application of the theory of extreme
values as illustrated in the example.
