Fire risk mapping based assessment method applied in performance based design

A risk mapping based assessment method was proposed and applied in this study, in an attempt to reduce the uncertainties in verification of numerous performance criteria corresponding to unstructured fire risk indices. In this method, the fire hazards in terms of thermal effects, toxicity and hypoxia were combined into a single fire hazard ranking, based on whose definition fire hazard maps can be extracted from the fields to intuitively indicate the life safety threat to evacuees. Then through integrating the fire hazard maps with the evacuation modeling, fire risk maps together with a set of fire risk indices can be obtained based on large sample statistics. The evacuation design was optimized based on the fire hazard map and assessed using the global fire risk indices. Comparison with the traditional fire risk assessment method shows that the current risk mapping based assessment method combines fire hazards and integrates evacuation factor, providing a practicable approach to improve the accuracy and reliability of risk assessment in performance based design. (c) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.