Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This paper presents a systematic approach for fire safety engineering, utilizing risk analysis principles. The described methodology is the foundation for a computer program developed for the performance-based fire risk assessment of buildings and the evaluation of alternative safety systems that may maintain the risk of building occupants and equipment, in respect to fire hazards, at tolerable levels. The computer program evaluates fire risk of a specified facility by automatically (1) generating an event tree and enumerating all credible accident scenarios that may follow a range of initiating events, (2) assessing of resulting consequences and associated impact, and (3) calculating the corresponding likelihood of occurrence of each accident scenario. This methodology and the corresponding computer program comprise modeled physical phenomena and stochastic characteristics associated with each elemental event of a scenario. A case study is presented wherein various strategies of risk reduction are compared by implementation of this technique and by deployment of the developed computer tool.