Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

In a similar manner to other fire safety engineering guidelines around the world, the Australian Fire Engineering Guidelines identifies ASET/RSET timeline analysis as one of the methods to be used in assessments. RSET, the occupant related component of this method, can be extremely complicated due to the number of occupants within a building, variations in their characteristics and the unpredictability of their behavior. In order to simplify the assessment of occupants, a "design occupant groups" concept is introduced in the, soon to be published, new edition of the Australian Fire Safety Engineering Guidelines. By concentrating only on the occupants that are likely to have a major impact on various phases of the evacuation process design occupant groups approach aims to limit uncertainties and the scope for error. When combined with a quasi-probabilistic variation of the traditional ASET/RSET assessment, the design occupant groups approach has the potential to generate more reliable outcomes with less inherent risk (or conservatism).