THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF SPRINKLERS IN SCHOOLS

摘要

Each year around 1 in 20 schools experiences a fire and nearly 60% of school fires are starteddeliberately. Recent UK government guidance, in the form of Building Bulletin 100 (BB 100), covers therequirements for life safety, and also goes beyond this to also stress the importance of protecting thefabric of schools. There is extensive guidance on the use of sprinklers and their importance as a protectionagainst arson. It is now a UK Government expectation that all new schools will have sprinklers fitted. Anyexceptions to this will have to be justified by demonstrating that a school is low risk and that the use ofsprinklers would not be good value for money. To help people reach the right decisions, a risk assessmentand cost benefit analysis (CBA) tool, specifically covering the use of sprinklers, has been developed.This paper briefly describes the risk assessment and cost benefit analysis tool. It uses an event tree toestimate the likelihoods of different fire scenarios. The consequences of the different scenarios also needto be estimated, in terms of various risk metrics – life safety, property damage, business interruption, etc.Various systems may be in place to mitigate the risk, either by reducing a scenario’s likelihood, or itsconsequences, or both. The paper focuses on the input data requirements of the tool, and how suitablevalues may be determined. A case study is described to illustrate the application of the tool in practice.