Risk-based fire resistance requirements: Final Report

Fire resistance requirements vary significantly between different European countries, with many of these differences having no obvious technical basis but originating in a historical evolution process under the influence of various non-technical factors. Thus, their basis may be non-coherent and have inconsistencies. This leads to disadvantages such as barriers to trade, putting different structural solutions on an unequal competitive basis with steel often on the losing side, causing alternative fire safety strategies to be overlooked, and introducing lack of flexibility and clashing with innovativeness. A rational approach is to start from the risks and see how one should set the fire resistance levers in order to achieve acceptably low risks. A prerequisite for a transition to risk-based fire resistance requirements is a 'tool' with which one can link the structural fire performance and the resulting risks. The 'tool' must be quantitative and work on probabilistic basis. As acceptably low fire risks emerge from a combination of passive and active fire safety measures, the tool must take into account all fire safety measures. Nowadays, with the enormous computational power and versatile, valid fire and structural simulation models available, the tool should be based on simulation of fire and structural response. The methodology established in the RISK REI project is such a 'tool', i.e., a methodology which allows linking the structural stability requirement to the probability and consequences of unwanted outcomes of a fire. The final report presents the RISK REI methodology and gives examples demonstrating its use.