Fire Risk Analysis: Its Validity And Potential For Application In Fire Safety

Abstract

Approaches of risk analysis and risk assessment as well as risk concept have been extensively applied to fire research and engineering for solutions of real problems in the past few decades. Further, it is worthy to note that the concept of risk analysis is applied in the methodology of estimation of fire safety level required by the performance-based codes in many countries. In this paper, the author discusses what is usually called "Fire Risk Analysis" and then introduces why and how the analysis of fire statistics is so significant within the context of fire risk analysis. Although statistical analysis using fire data differs in a precise sense from the scenario-based fire risk analysis, it is still the useful method to derive directly the profiles of what consequence a fire will generate to a number of buildings/designs which share some attributes such as property use, size or height, type of construction, type of occupants, etc. and forms a part of fire risk analysis.