A ranking system for fire safety performance of student housing facilities

Abstract

For old/existing buildings, detailed fire risk assessments based on current codes and standards may result in unrealistic conclusions. Hence, it is desired that more holistic approaches are employed such as safety ranking systems. This paper seeks to propose a Fire Safety Ranking System (SH-FSRS) for student housing facilities. A review of published literature and code requirements formed the basis for the identification of the required fire safety attributes. These attributes were grouped into three criteria: building characteristics; fire safety systems; and management and maintenance. Professional experts have been consulted for pairwise comparisons to derive the weights for these criteria and attributes through the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The study has also presented the implementation of the developed SH-FSRS on a case study. A conglomerate of student housing facilities was grouped into four architectural models, and their fire safety rankings were presented. Model D facilities ranked first (final score 81%), model B facilities ranked second (final score 69%), model A facilities ranked third (59%) and Model C facilities ranked fourth (final score 55%). Finally, recommendations were provided to improve the fire safety performance of these facilities.