STATISTICAL ANALYSIS ON RELATION BETWEEN ATTRIBUTES OF RESIDENTS AND HOUSES AND FIRE DEATH RISK IN RESIDENTIAL FIRES

Abstract

The reduction of residential fire deaths is achieved not only by popularization of fire protection equipment such as smoke detectors and/or residential sprinklers, but also by many other efforts such as improvement in fire safety of appliances and popularization of fire-resistive construction in homes. The authors believe that preventing fire ignitions and mitigating fire damage through passive fire protection measures are both effective and fundamental approaches to reduce future fire deaths in addition to active fire protection systems. Therefore, we are working toward examining the availability of various measures that would reduce residential fire fatalities in high-risk groups. For this purpose, two main kinds of data sources were used in the analysis to see the relation between attributes of residents and houses and fire death risk in residential fires. One is the national database of fire incident and fire fatality reports collected by the Fire and Disaster Management Agency. The other source is the housing survey database with data such as age of residents, type of household, type of house and structure, and so forth. As a result, we found housing conditions such as type of house and structure are significantly relating to the fire deaths risk in residential fires together with the attributes of victims such as physical capability and/or age.