Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The authors and their colleagues have been trying to construct a framework of risk-based fire evacuation safety design method in buildings. In the framework, it is necessary to determine a benchmark fire risk level to select design fires and scenarios appropriately. In this paper, an attempt was made to develop the benchmark fire risk level by using 10-years statistical data in residential fire. Firstly, the acceptable evacuation risk in fire was established assuming that the level of evacuation risk for dwelling houses is the benchmark. Secondary, the fire statistics for buildings with different type of use was analyzed to establish a formula for the acceptable evacuation risk in the context of performance-based evacuation safety design that commonly holds for various types of use. Finally discussions were made of other methods for determining the bench mark evacuation risk.