THE FIRE SAFETY TRIANGLE FIRE SCIENCE, FIRE SAFETY ENGINEERING AND PERFORMANCE BASED BUILDING CODES

摘要

Advances in fire science has produced the knowledge, methodologies and tools that has underpinned the growth of fire safety engineering in terms of it capabilities and sophistication. The rapid growth of fire safety engineering has been fostered by the introduction of performance based building codes which have provided new oportunities for the design of buildings and the writing of performance based codes was stimulated by the ability of fire safety engineering to develop performance based solutions. This paper discusses the major deficiencies in the methodologies, tools and data available to the fire safety engineer and the improvements and research that are needed, not only to lessen the need for 慹 xpert judgement', but to improve the lack of uniformity of fire safety assessments evident at the present time. Key areas discussed include the quantification of the goals, the development of mathematical models for fire development, smoke spread and fire protection measures, design fires, the evacuation of people in fire emergencies and data for validation and input for fire safety engineering assessments.