Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

A range of twelve building designs contained within and deemed to satisfy the performance requirements of the Building Code of Australia have been modelled to determine their risk to life safety due to fire. The risk is measured in terms of the expected fatality rate per 1000 fires, for occupants of the apartment of fire origin (AFO) and the apartments of non-fire origin (ANFO). Three groupings of buildings have been identified from the computer modelling based on the ANFO results. Low-rise (< 4 storeys) buildings were found to have average ANFO fatality rates of ? 0.2 fatalities per 1000 fires. Medium-rise buildings with heights less than 25 m but with four or more storeys were found to have average fatality rates of 3.3 to 3.4 fatalities per 1000 fires. High-rise buildings with heights equal to or greater than 25 m had average fatality rates ranging from 1.7 to 2.1 fatalities per 1000 fires. These differences show the impact of different minimum fire safety systems (e.g., sprinklers in buildings ? 25 m in height) required by the Building Code of Australia. Interestingly there are discrete steps in these fatality rates across the range of buildings that are also present in the fire statistics. This paper reports the first computer based quantified levels of risk to life safety in apartment buildings with the minimum deemed-to-satisfy fire-safety systems.