First Pass at Computing the Cost of Fire Safety in a Modern Society

摘要

The report provides an estimate of the total annual dollar costs of establishingand maintaining fire safety in 20th-Century United States. The cost of fire safety estimate is needed to serve as a basis for evaluating the benefits and appropriateness of current and proposed fire research programs of NIST. This was a relatively modest effort to obtain a first-order estimate of these costs and much of what is reported in these two reports is anecdotal. Nonetheless, the central conclusions one comes to in reading them are that the burden of fire on our society is substantially greater than previously realized and that significant reductions in this burden may be readily achievable through the continued development of fire science and the rapid transfer of fire research results. These findings are particularly relevant as the U.S. economy and its manufacturing infrastructure adjust to the competitive challenges of the global marketplace.