Fire Protection Provision of Structures from FHA Perspective

Abstract

It is observed that in many civil structures, passive fire protection requirement is arrived at by prescriptive methods recommended by National Building Code (NBC) or Indian Standards rather than analyzing from fire safety point of view using standard technique like Fire Hazard Analysis (FHA). FHA helps in analyzing the fire hazard aspects in terms of possible fire scenarios, consequences of fire deterministically/probabilistically; judges the adequacy of fire protection for prevention, detection, suppression, extinction and containment of fire and its effects. It is observed that almost in all cases of fire protection of civil structures, the resources are not properly used nor safety is assessed in the way it should be. Improper resource utilization results in environmental concern besides the economic aspect of a project. This paper discusses the passive fire protection measures for civil structures from FHA point of view with outcome derived from fire dynamics simulation and suggests the changes required to be made in regulatory requirement in the context of passive fire protection for civil structures, in particular. It also emphasizes the need of FHA for arriving at the fire barrier ratings of fire barriers/walls.