Assessment Of The Probabilities That Staff And/or Patients Will Detect Fires In Hospitals

Abstract

This paper describes how fault tree analysis may be used to calculate the probability that people will detect fires in hospitals. In particular, study is made of the contribution of patients and varying staff numbers. Their contribution is based on new data gathered by shadowing staff and assessing wards. This data showed that staff spent 75 per cent of their time undertaking duties that would facilitate the detection of fires, in locations where they could observe more than 30 per cent of the ward. This provides a greater understanding why the historical data indicates that staff observation of fire is so effective. It is concluded that fault tree analysis offers a useful tool which can inform decisions regarding the costbenefit of fire protection measures.KEY WORDS Fault tree analysis, fire detection, hospital fire safety, observation by people, probability.

Preliminary Analysis Of The Number Of Occupants, Fire Growth, Detection Times And Pre-movement Times For Probabilistic Risk Assessment

“…The graph shows that there are relatively few occupants in the room of origin in most fires, but that there may be a significantly long tail to the distribution. The results indicate how the design limits of 0.5 and 1.5 people per m 2 for shops and malls (respectively) [3] compare to those measured at the time of a fire. …”

“…The most stochastic aspects of fire safety have been challenging scientists, regulators and designers of buildings for many years [1][2] [3]. These aspects include the rate of fire growth, the response of the building to fire and human behaviour in fire including the number of people and their pre-movement time…etc.…”