APPLICATION OF FIRE RESEARCH TO BUILDING FIRE SAFETY DESIGN - CURRENT BENEFITS AND FUTURE NEEDS

There is a strong international move towards performance based fire regulations for buildings with New Zealand and Australia at the forefront of research in this fold. The reform of regulations is thought to offer more innovation and flexibility in building design and greater cost effectiveness in construction. An important part of the research in this area is related to the development of agreed approaches to fire safety design, such as the Fire Code Reform Centre's "Fire Engineering Guidelines" or New Zealand's "Fire Engineering Design Guide". Such design process documents have incorporated or referenced much of the latest research in areas such as: tenability criteria fire compartment models egress models risk assessment. Use of such design guidelines or equivalents in major projects in countries such as Hong Kong and Australia have highlighted where fro engineering can offer real benefits to building designers and ultimately building owners and operators. However, there is still much research to be done and use of a systematic, logical design approach clearly identifies where design data or modelling techniques are still urgently required. Such areas are: fire growth rates and peak heat release rates for non-residential occupancies pre-movement times related to egress experimental validation and limits of applicability of CFD and other compartment Ire models probability/reliability data on fire protection systems for risk based analysis. Examples from case studies will be shown where lack of such research and poor judgement can lead to inferior design solutions or where unnecessarily conservative designs can lead to cost excesses. In summary, the link between Ire engineering designers and the research community is very important to highlight areas of fire research that will have the most benefit to the building and construction industry.nstruction industry.