The Idea of the Construction Police in the Historical Perspective against the Background of the German Legal Culture

Th Construction Police, as a task (function) of the state, is the public safety department, which ensures the safety and culture for the using of the building objects. Th institutional roots of this department date back to the age of Enlightenment, the doctrinal ones – to early modern period or even earlier and the legislative ones – to the 19th century. Ths Police is connected with the fire and sanitary safety of buildings. Building laws became the part of the code law, then of police ordinances and, finally, the separate building ordinances were issued (in cities at fist). In the German territories, the period after the Thirty Years’ war was of great importance for the development of the legislation and the building policies, together with the development of cameralism (Kameralismus) and political economy (Polizeiwissenschaft). Th 19th century was the era of codification of the building law in the form of nationwide building acts.

A new framework is presented to facilitate better incorporation of building fire safety performance options into the building design process. Based on the building design process and key design decisions undertaken at each phase, a knowledge set is developed to aid building designers to understand better the effects of design decisions on building fire performance. This also minimizes potential competing objectives in later design phases by sharing necessary concerns in advance. Drawing on the knowledge set, a conceptual building fire safety evaluation tool illustrates how primary building designers and fire safety engineers can quantitatively assess fire safety performance for different solutions. It is shown how building fire safety performance attributes can be arranged by building design phase, how various scenarios can be explored, and how appropriately balanced building design and fire safety design solutions can be identified at different phases of the building design process.

Purpose The current fire protection measures in buildings do not account for all contemporary fire hazard issues, which has made fire safety a growing concern. Therefore, this paper aims to present a critical review of current fire protection measures and their applicability to address current challenges relating to fire hazards in buildings. Design/methodology/approach To overcome fire hazards in buildings, impact of fire hazards is also reviewed to set the context for fire protection measures. Based on the review, an integrated framework for mitigation of fire hazards is proposed. The proposed framework involves enhancement of fire safety in four key areas: fire protection features in buildings, regulation and enforcement, consumer awareness and technology and resources advancement. Detailed strategies on improving fire safety in buildings in these four key areas are presented, and future research and training needs are identified. Findings Current fire protection measures lead to an unquantified level of fire safety in buildings, provide minimal strategies to mitigate fire hazard and do not account for contemporary fire hazard issues. Implementing key measures that include reliable fire protection systems, proper regulation and enforcement of building code provisions, enhancement of public awareness and proper use of technology and resources is key to mitigating fire hazard in buildings. Major research and training required to improve fire safety in buildings include developing cost-effective fire suppression systems and rational fire design approaches, characterizing new materials and developing performance-based codes. Practical implications The proposed framework encompasses both prevention and management of fire hazard. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified, and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework. Social implications Fire represents a severe hazard in both developing and developed countries and poses significant threat to life, structure, property and environment. The proposed framework has social implications as it addresses some of the current challenges relating to fire hazard in buildings and will enhance overall fire safety. Originality/value The novelty of proposed framework lies in encompassing both prevention and management of fire hazard. This is unlike current fire safety improvement strategies, which focus only on improving fire protection features in buildings (i.e. managing impact of fire hazard) using performance-based codes. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework. Special emphasis is given to cost-effectiveness of proposed strategies, and research and training needs for further enhancing building fire safety are identified.

Besides providing indoor living comfort, a building must also ensure the safety of its occupants. Natural disasters excluded, the safety of a building’s occupants is most often threatened by fire. More than one-third of all fires in the world are related to fires in buildings, and currently more than 10 people per million of the population die in building fires. Due to the constant updating of fire-safety regulations, the number of deaths due to fires in buildings has declined by 65% over last 30 years [1]. Building physics in the field of fire safety focuses on a description of the physical fundamentals of the fires in buildings and the way that building materials and structures respond to a fire. A fire in a building occurs in several stages. In the first stage, which usually takes for up to several tens of minutes and is known as the fire growth stage, it is important to protect people as they are evacuating the building. In the second stage, with a fully developed fire, it is necessary for the building structures to retain their load-bearing capacity and prevent the spread of the fire to other building zones or the surrounding buildings. Thus, extinguishing a fire is less dangerous for the firefighters and leads to less damage to property. The fire safety in buildings is achieved with both passive and active measures. The passive measures are related to building materials and the building construction’s response to the fire, while the active measures include the control of smoke and heat propagation in buildings by either the natural or forced ventilation of fire compartments. Other active measures include technical systems for detection, alarm and fire-extinguisher systems.

Fire safety and security system in high-rise buildings has been a significant issue from the last century. However, there are numerous provisions for safety measures from such fires and the magnitude and nature of the problem of this hazard has been unknown. This study identifies the location of high-rise buildings in Tangail pourashava through an extensive survey and then identifies the unique fire safety problems of those buildings and their associated fire risk. As it turns out, most of those buildings are highly vulnerable to fire risk due to lack of major fire fighting equipments and defiance of related laws and regulations. The study then addresses the means to provide fire safety in those buildings from both design and codes perspectives. It elaborates on the need to provide both building and occupant based protection to achieve the best results. It concludes with an overview of the special problems associated with high-rise buildings combined with specific use and occupancy-related requirements, employee training and response.J. Environ. Sci. & Natural Resources, 10(1): 33-40 2017

The Research on the Current Safety Status of High-rise Building at Home and Abroad

Fire safety measures save lives and reduce economic losses caused by building fires. However, these benefits come at a cost, because fire safety is not free of charge. An economic optimum is achieved when the total costs of fire and fire safety are minimized. Of course, fire safety decisions cannot be based only on economic reasoning. The safety of building occupants is an important boundary condition for monetary optimization. Societal resources for life saving measures are limited and should be invested where the largest risk reduction can be achieved. Thus, also the definition of acceptance criteria for decisions regarding investments into life safety should be based on efficiency considerations. The focus of this thesis is on the optimization of societal investments for preventive building fire safety. The starting point is the formulation of a general decision problem consisting of two parts: monetary optimization and societal risk acceptance. The optimization may be performed either by a private decision-maker or at societal level. The acceptability of fire safety decisions with respect to life safety, on the other hand, is always evaluated from a societal point of view. Quantitative acceptance criteria can be derived based on the marginal life saving costs principle, which ensures that societal resources are directed to the most efficient risk reduction measures available. Decisions on fire safety measures are generally made by the owner of a building. At societal level, investments into building fire safety are controlled mainly based on codes and regulations. The owner is free to optimize fire safety using his own objective function, provided that he fulfils the minimum requirements defined by the code. Traditionally, fire safety is regulated based on prescriptive rules defining in detail which measures have to be taken to reduce fire risk. In order to increase the flexibility of code-based fire safety design, a number of countries around the world have adopted performance-based codes, which specify the design objectives, but leave the concrete choice of measures to the designers. Unfortunately, the code objectives are rarely formulated in quantitative terms. In this thesis it is shown how quantitative safety goals for code-based design may be derived from a generic risk-informed framework for balancing the costs and benefits of fire safety. Following this approach, both prescriptive and performance-based fire safety codes can be based on the same principles of monetary optimization and acceptable life safety. Fire safety decisions are decisions under uncertainty. Optimizing fire safety thus requires risk assessment for evaluating the effect of safety investments on the expected monetary and human consequences of fire. For a comparison between the uncertain benefits of fire safety measures and their costs, the risk has to be assessed in absolute terms, with as little bias as possible. The present thesis explores the use of statistical data to reduce the modelling bias resulting from assumptions and simplifications used to estimate the risk. A framework for the calibration of engineering fire risk models with data collected by, for instance, fire brigades or insurance companies is developed. The proposed approach allows a combination of engineering knowledge with observations from real fire events, making the best use of both sources of information.

ABSTRACTResilience, sustainability, and smartness (ReSuSm) within the building construction sector impact, or are impacted by building fires in one way or another. Hence, consideration of ReSuSm for building fire risk management (BFRM) is imperative to enhance safety and mitigate adverse impacts. This study aims to understand the ReSuSm concepts for BFRM, encompassing their conceptualization and interconnectedness. For this purpose, relevant articles were systematically selected and comprehensively reviewed. Based on this review, ReSuSm in the context of building fires is defined as the capacity to enhance building fire safety through pre‐fire improvements, during‐fire responses and damage reduction, and post‐fire recovery. Collectively they aim to safeguard lives, protect structures and assets, ensure environmental preservation, and mitigate economic impacts from building fires. They can be achieved through effective BFRM, ensuring technology integration, human and social resource mobilization, and collaboration among relevant stakeholders. Despite the synergies and opportunities of considering ReSuSm together for BFRM, several contradictions and challenges persist. Resilient and smart BFRM measures do not always ensure sustainability. Conversely, sustainable measures and smart technologies may inadvertently increase building fire risks, contradicting resilience. Furthermore, smart technologies have their own challenges. Notwithstanding these conflicts and challenges, ReSuSm for BFRM facilitates the achievement of building fire safety. The findings of this study hold significant value for policymakers and practitioners in the building construction and building fire safety sectors. They can contribute to enhancing relevant policies and practices by incorporating ReSuSm into BFRM, striking a balance among them. Such initiatives can further strengthen building fire safety.

This article hypothesizes that economic reforms become sustainable when the discursive conditions prevailing in society tip against the existing paradigm under exceptional circumstances. Thus, unless the pro-liberalization constituencies dominate the development discourse, economic reforms, initiated under the exigencies of crisis and conditionalities, or carried out by a convinced executive with or without the stimulus of a crisis, will be reversed. The discursive conditions are determined based on eight factors: the dominant view of international intellectuals, illustrative country cases, executive orientations, political will, the degree and the perceived causes of economic crisis, attitudes on the part of donor agencies, and the perceived outcomes of economic reforms. The paper seeks to prove this “discursive dominance” hypothesis for the Indian case through a cross-temporal, comparative review of the evolution of economic policy in India over six different phases.

A wide variety of active fire protection systems are available to fire safety practitioners. In addition to passive fire protection measures, some level of active fire protection is normally required to meet the expected minimum level of fire safety in modern buildings. Active fire protection can also be used to increase the fire safety in order to achieve a more flexible fire safety design and an acceptable level of fire safety in buildings. There are many types of active fire protection systems, but this chapter deals mainly with automatic fire sprinkler systems, since they are often used to facilitate the use of timber as structure, internal linings and external facades in large or complex buildings. Sprinklers are required in some countries for taller timber buildings, as described in Chapter 4.

Purpose Proactive building fire risk management (PBFRM) emphasises taking proactive actions to identify and address potential risks, thereby enhancing safety. Many studies exist on building fire, but few focus on PBFRM. This paper aims to fill this research gap by developing a conceptual framework of PBFRM. This research systematically identifies and explores the building fire safety recommendations from the perspective of their application for this purpose. Design/methodology/approach Within the scope of this research, a total of 109 articles were selected systematically following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses protocol, followed by their comprehensive review with respect to the research objectives. Findings The identified recommendations were categorised and explained based on their purposes for PBFRM. They include inherent safety and prevention; detection and warning; control; emergency response; risk assessment and management; and addressing vulnerabilities and enhancing capacity. The findings of this research indicate that the identified recommendations contribute to preventing or mitigating building fire and exposure, addressing vulnerabilities for risk reduction and enhancing the capacity to manage residual risk. Originality/value The research findings, along with the recommended future research, will be valuable to policymakers and practitioners in the building fire safety sector. They will help enhance relevant policies and practices to further strengthen the application of building fire safety recommendations for implementing PBFRM. These findings and their implications will thus proactively address the risks associated with building fire incidents, thereby reinforcing building fire safety.

The primary goal of fire safety is to ensure people's life safety when fire occurs. In this study, reliability analysis method is presented to assess the safety level of occupant evacuation in building fires. Uncertainty analysis of parameters is carried out. In order to express the uncertainty and stochastic characteristic, influencing parameters are considered to comply with a certain probability distribution. The fire growth rate, building height, and total width of exit are analyzed based on the proposed method. It is found that the failure probability increases with the increase of fire growth rate, but decreases with the increase of building height and total width of exit. Nevertheless, the failure probability will not decrease anymore when total width of exit reaches to a certain value. Finally, a building's fire safety is evaluated. The conclusions in this work would be helpful for fire safety assessment and management.

Mapping the knowledge domains of research on fire safety – an informetrics analysis

A system for describing the expected hazards of building fires

Hong Kong’s steep hilly terrain limits the growth of surface urban areas. In response to the society’s needs for land to support social and economic developments, the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is actively exploring the use of caverns as one of the innovative measures to supplement Hong Kong’s land resources. The development of cavern space is an attractive option to meet the land demand not only for “not-in-my-backyard” (nimby) type public utilities but also for a wide spectrum of uses including commercial, industrial and community type facilities. The development of cavern fire safety design in Hong Kong evolved from the first cavern project in around 1980s. The design guideline “Guide to Fire Safety Design for Caverns” was jointly established by Building Authority and Fire Services Department in 1994, by referring to overseas and local experience consolidated in the Study of the Potential Use of Underground Space (SPUN) in 1990. This guideline however was developed with a focus on caverns for use by low population public utilities such as sewage treatment works and water service reservoirs where the fire load is generally localised, closely controlled and relatively low. Whereas, other prescriptive fire safety guidelines commonly adopted in the Code of Practice for Fire Safety in Buildings 2011 (FS Code) and the Codes of Practice for Minimum Fire Service Installations and Equipment and Inspection, Testing and Maintenance of Installations and Equipment (FSI Code) were developed for typical surface buildings only. The existing fire design guidelines are found to be not fully compatible with the recent expanding spectrum of cavern usage in Hong Kong. Each cavern development type has its unique site setting and fire safety characteristics under the proposed usage (e.g. government facilities, industrial and commercial facilities like concrete batching/rock processing/asphalt production plants, data centres, logistics/warehouse facilities, etc.). Strictly following the prescriptive fire safety requirements and the design guidelines for typical buildings to these usages in cavern will pose immense technical issues/challenges to cavern projects and could also lead to unwarranted impacts on their functional operations. A more coherent fire safety design approach for new cavern projects is therefore needed to facilitate project proponents to plan cavern projects in the future. This paper provides an overview of fire safety issues for cavern development, and also discusses the practical solutions in formulating the associated fire safety strategies which have been adopted in the latest cavern projects in Hong Kong, covering the technical issues on fire resisting construction, means of escape, means of access for firefighting and smoke management.