The protection of buildings against fire disasters may require a comparison of alternative fire safety designs. The fire safety solutions can be compared by means of a general methodology known as multi‐attribute selection or multi‐criteria decision making. The alternative fire designs can be described by a number of attributes which characterise each of the alternatives. Fire risk expressed in the general form used for the quantitative risk assessment is applied to compose the set of attributes of a multi‐attribute selection problem. It is shown how to accomplish the multi‐attribute selection in the presence of epistemic uncertainties in the elements of fire risk estimate. Epistemic probability distributions assigned to elements of fire risk are specified and propagated though models of the multi‐attribute selection by means of Monte Carlo simulation. An example presented in the paper considers the choice among alternative systems of automatic fire sprinklers. Santruka Norint užtikrinti pastatu gaisrine sauga, gali prireikti lyginti alternatyvius projektinius saugos sprendimus. Tai atlikti galima pasitelkiant daugiakriterinio vertinimo metodologija. Alternatyvieji sprendimai gali būti aprašyti keletu charakteristiku (atributu) ir lyginami vienas su kitu. Straipsnyje atributu sarašas sudaromas naudojant gaisro rizikos išraiška, sudaroma kiekybinio rizikos vertinimo principais. Parodyta, kaip atlikti daugiakriterini vertinima, kai rizikos išraiškos elementai yra neapibrežti epistemine prasme. Episteminio neapibrežtumo skirstiniai priskiriami uždavinio atributams ir propaguojami matematiniais daugiakriterinio vertinimo modeliais pasitelkiant Monte Karlo modeliavima. Pateikiamas pavyzdys, nagrinejantis automatiniu sprinkleriu sistemos parinkima iš keliu alternatyviu variantu.
The economic decisions concerning fire safety of built property may involve alternative solutions (alternatives) of fire protection measures, comparison of buildings with different fire safety levels, choice among construction products with different properties of performance in fire. The need to choose among alternatives may be faced by various interested parties: fire safety regulators (authorities on national level), insurers, architects (building designers), manufacturers of fire protection measures, property owners and buyers. The problem of choice will often involve the need to consider simultaneously several characteristics (attributes) of alternatives, and those related to fire safety will be accompanied by economic and non-economic ones. Such a choice can be formalised as a problem of multiattribute selection (MAS), a filed known also as multicriteria decision making (MCDM).The present paper aims to formulate and solve several problems of multi-attribute selection by taking into account attributes related to fire safety. The problems are considered in an attempt to facilitate decision-making on three levels: the level of a property buyer/renter, the level of a property owner, and the level of an architect (building designer). It is shown that a different level of decision making requires to apply attributes of different nature. The well-developed field of fire safety offers a range of quantitative and qualitative indicators describing fire performance of building materials, construction and fire protection products as well as entire buildings. These indicators are introduced, with relative ease, into MAS problems.The attributes of economic nature fit naturally in the MAS problems involving fire safety. They can be introduced passively and accompany fire-related attributes as well as other non-economic attributes. However, economic aspects of MAS problems can be used in a more subtle way, namely, by introducing elements of formal expression of risk posed by fires. Monetary losses caused by fires are among the elements of a risk profile. An expected value of these losses can be used as an MAS attribute.
The design of buildings may include a comparison of alternative architectural and structural solutions. They can be developed at different levels of design process. The alternative design solutions are compared and ranked by applying methods of multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM). Each design is characterised by a number of criteria used in a MCDM problem. The paper discusses how to choose MCDM criteria expressing fire safety related to alternative designs. Probability of a successful evacuation of occupants from a building fire and difference between evacuation time and time to untenable conditions are suggested as the most important criteria related to fire safety. These two criteria are treated as uncertain quantities expressed by probability distributions. Monte Carlo simulation of fire and evacuation processes is natural means for an estimation of these distributions. The presence of uncertain criteria requires applying stochastic MCDM methods for ranking alternative designs. An application of the safety-related criteria is illustrated by an example which analyses three alternative architectural floor plans prepared for a reconstruction of a medical building. A MCDM method based on stochastic simulation is used to solve the example problem.
The paper considers the problem of fire safety assurance by means of fire risk indexing and fire risk assessment. Attention is focused on the comparison of these two principal approaches and the possibilities of applying them in a combined set. The paper is aimed at defining, comparing and analyzing fire safety assessment by applying the aforementioned approaches. The practicability of both approaches is compared by means of an example considering fire safety of an existing office building. It is stated that fire risk indexing is more practicable than formal risk assessment despite all shortcomings of the former approach. It is highly probable that comprehensive decision-making concerning fire safety assurance will be based on fire risk indexing rather than on formal risk assessment.
Annotation. Sprinkler systems allow a considerable reduction of fire risk in buildings. Unfortunately, sprinklers are not failsafe technical systems. Relatively high rates of sprinkler failures evoke the problem of reliability. A solution to this problem is considered from several viewpoints. The diversity of sprinklers' failure modes is the first challenge for estimating reliability (failure probability). It is found that the use of the available data for estimation is problematic. The second challenge is that the published data is insufficiently described to allow a verification of its relevance to the specific case of failure probability estimation. It is suggested to apply the published data with partial relevance to Bayesian inference about failure probabilities. The data is used for developing prior distributions of the unknown values of the probabilities. Bayesian inference is carried out on the basis of binomial distribution used to model the operation of sprinklers on demand basis. A problem of aging and a possible increase in failure probability in the course of sprinkler service is shortly discussed.
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