Citation

Melinek SJ. Fire Safety J. 1993; 20(1): 71-82.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1993, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper presents equations and tables for the estimation of the optimal level of fire safety or other protection, assuming that failure depends on the value of a random variable which is distributed normally or log normally and that the cost of protection varies linearly with the factor of safety.

It is shown that the optimal level of expenditure on safety usually substantially exceeds the expected loss. Any reduction in the safety expenditure below the optimal level results in a rapid increase in the expected loss. A simple rule also emerges concerning tradeoffs between alternative safety measures--if fires (or any other hazard) can be controlled at an early stage by, say, active protection, the optimal response will usually be to reduce expenditure on other measures, such as passive protection, so that the overall frequency of failure remains approximately constant. The optimal response to improved data is also examined.