Citation

Bjelland H, Njå O. Safety Sci. 2022; 148: e105651.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssci.2021.105651

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the last ten years, standardization enterprises (ISO and national units) have carried out extensive work to establish standards and codes for fire safety engineering. An example is a Nordic initiative, providing guidance on "Probabilistic Analysis for Verifying Fire Safety Design in Buildings" [SN-INSTA/TR 951:2019]. In this paper, we analyze core concepts of the technical report (TR 951), using the perspective of fire safety management. The assumption is that authorities, engineering resources and building developers must cooperate. When, after design and construction, a building enters the operation phase, new actors are increasingly involved: the building owner, users and the rescue services. One can hope that novel building designs subjected to probabilistic methods for verifying fire safety (the TR 951) have their base in trustworthy, traceable and sound design processes. The essence is knowledge that must be open for review and discussion. We question the usefulness of the TR 951. Instead of enhancing flexibility in the choice of solutions and fire safety awareness, the fear is that the TR 951 will enforce rigid constraints in fire risk analyses in an attempt to comply with unclear statements of performance criteria.

Language: en

Keywords

Fire safety engineering; Probabilistic methods; Standardization; Validation; Verification