The development of a points scheme to assess fire safety in hospitals

doi:10.1016/0379-7112(84)90034-1

Fire Safety Journal

Volume 7, Issue 2, 1984, Pages 145-153

https://doi.org/10.1016/0379-7112(84)90034-1 Get rights and content

Abstract

The improvement of fire safety standards in existing buildings requires a systematic evaluation of both the present deficiencies and the options for improvement. A “points” scheme offered a simple and repeatable method of performing such an analysis of the patient areas within hospitals, and the Department of Fire Safety Engineering at the University of Edinburgh was sponsored by the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) to produce such a scheme. The authority of a points scheme derives from the experience of those producing it and the use of the “Delphi” technique to produce this scheme is described.

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Citation Excerpt :
This was added in the calculation process to incorporate the “degree to which the contribution of a component to fire safety is enhanced by the interaction of other components” [38]. The process has been presented by Stollard [40] and Soja [37]. Soja [37] phrased it as “with two or more components working together, their combined value is worth more than the sum of the individual contribution, so a method was sought to express this idea in numbers”.
This work summarises the key points that can be drawn from the extensive body of literature associated with fire risk indexing methods. A comprehensive definition of fire risk indexing is provided and the sometimes opaque mechanics of indexing are described in detail. Issues arising from fire risk indexing methods are explored, and the variety of terminology associated with this method is clarified. It is also explored how the development and operation of indexing methods are entangled with issues of reliable expert elicitation and professional competence of the end user. It emerges that the greater the complexity of a method, the more the workings of the method become obfuscated. This creates an inherent tension between the simplicity of the method and its transparency to the users – an issue the developers of fire risk indices ought to address from an early point.
Optimized fire protection of cultural heritage structures based on the analytic hierarchy process
2016, Journal of Building Engineering
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The basic concept of the hierarchical approach is the decomposition of the problem into multiple levels of hierarchy, usually four or five. The development of a hierarchical approach to fire ranking was initially undertaken at the University of Edinburgh [21–23], in an attempt to create a systematic model for the evaluation of fire safety in hospitals. Usually, there is a need for more than two levels of hierarchy for the case of the fire safety.
Fire safety constitutes a significant part of engineering design practice that frequently lead designers to face critical decision-making type of questions. Especially in the case of fire protection of cultural heritage structures, the challenges that engineers confront are sometimes very difficult to deal with. Conventional prescriptive-based fire protection codes cannot be implemented for the protection of such structural systems; on the other hand, performance-based design (PBD) procedures can provide reliable solutions for this type of structures. Fire safety upgrading of historic structures can be expressed as multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems. In this context, we propose a model based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) that is able to assess the overall fire safety level of a structure in terms of the fire protection measures implemented. Moreover, a generic selection and resource allocation (S&RA) model is applied that in conjunction with the proposed AHP model leads to optimized solutions. In this study, the implementation of the proposed optimized fire protection upgrade framework along with its advantages is presented for the case of the Mount Athos monastery of Simonos Petra and results are discussed.
Indexing the contribution of household travel behaviour to sustainability
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Using the generic terminology of Dodd (1993), the hierarchy comprises a top Policy level, an Objectives level, a Tactics level and a baseline Components level – the aim being to get expert weightings for each of the baseline components relative to the overall policy level. This hierarchical approach was used successfully in a number of difficult Fire Safety Evaluation studies (Marchant, 1982; Stollard, 1984; Shields et al., 1990; Watts, 1991). It was agreed in this case that a decision hierarchy would reduce to a series of intermediate decisions, the difficult process of trying to weight or score the base-line attributes directly with respect to a global policy of sustainable development.
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1989, Fire Safety Journal
The use of expert opinion is considered to be an effective way of assessing complex fire problems where statistical records are not available.
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1986, Fire Safety Journal
The methodology used in the development of a fire safety evaluation scheme for patient areas in hospital has been utilised and applied to dwellings.
The Delphi technique is reviewed and used to generate the necessary data for use in the fire safety model.
The concept of a floating norm has been introduced thus rendering the model applicable to a wide range of dwelling types.
The Fire Safety Evaluation (Points) Scheme outlined in this paper is a useful tool which can aid management in the difficult task of identifying and ranking dwellings which fall below predetermined acceptable levels of fire safety and with the allocation of scarce resources such as the diversion of capital sums for new building programmes.
Criteria for acceptability for use with quantitative approaches to fire safety
1985, Fire Safety Journal
Quantitative approaches to estimating individual and societal risk in the nuclear industry, the chemical and fuel process industries and in building design are considered. Particular attention is paid to what have been proposed as target levels for acceptability of risk in these fields. Available data on multiple fatality fire occurrence in the United Kingdom, the United States and worldwide are examined. On the basis of this data a total societal fire risk for the U.K. is proposed. This, together with information on the number of premises at risk, allows target probabilities to be defined for premises of different size. These range from about 10⁻⁶ per annum, for premises where five or more people may be killed in a fire, to 10⁻⁷ to 10⁻⁸ per annum for premises where one hundred or more may be killed. These might be used with models of risk analysis aimed at estimating actual probabilities. These target values are compared with those used in other areas. Consideration is also given to the evaluation of the weightings used in points schemes and the development of targets of acceptability where such methods are employed.

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