Fire prevention and protection in civil buildings: the VALERIE project

The "VALERIE" project ("Fire Risk Assessment - Fire reaction of construction products") originates from a strict co-operation between IVALSA, the Fire Brigade Department of Trento and ISAQ Studio in Falconara (Ancona - Italy). The main objective of this project is to implement a standard procedure to reduce fire risks in civil buildings and to do this by applying the most efficient technology or the most cost efficient methods, taking into account the limitation of the regulation. The methodology proposed is quite user-friendly, even if it requires a good deal of experience about the fire risk analysis. Qualified professionals are therefore required for an adequate application of the VALERIE approach, consisting of a multi-level hierarchical analysis whose application implies the assignment of the appropriate "weight" to each element into which the whole problem (i.e. the fire safety of that specific building) has to be decomposed. The quality of the results given by the VALERIE model is directly related to appropriate choice of these "weights". To guarantee an unbiased assessment of the influence of each parameter relevant to the fire safety, a "reference ranking" shall be built-up, which has to be dependent from actual local working conditions. VALERIE, in order to obtain a common working platform, aims for a strict cooperation both with the fire brigade and with professionals in charge of the approval of the submitted designs. A further important task of this project is the definition of reference parameters for the assessment of a "safety index" recognised by all the involved parts and included in the official approval documents.