The two most commonly used regulatory approaches in fire safety are prescriptive and performance-based. Prescriptive approaches provide a set of rules that, if followed, are deemed to produce a design that has a sufficient level of safety. Performance-based approaches require the analysis of conditions (e.g. fire conditions) and performance (e.g. evacuation time) to determine (to quantify) whether the design affords a sufficient amount of safety (e.g. whether occupants get to safety before conditions are deemed untenable). Prescriptive approaches are designed to function for a predetermined set of scenario elements - building types, uses, fire threats and population types. The derivation of prescriptive rules must account for these elements. There is the potential for using performance-based approaches to quantify the impact of changes to prescriptive rules on safety levels, or to support the application of a prescriptive approach on specific designs. This presentation will discuss the potential for crossing the streams of the two approaches to enhance regulatory development and fire safety practice.

Target Audience
Fire protection/ fire safety engineers, AHJs, evacuation modellers.

Speaker
Professor Steve Gwynne