A fire safety assessment system for existing buildings

In Hong Kong, which is characterized by its tall, reinforced-concrete buildings with multiple owners, most of the high-rise buildings constructed before the mid-1970s are dilapidated. In order to address this problem, the Hong Kong Government intends to introduce mandatory safety assurance requirements with its so-called "Building Safety Inspection Scheme," under which building owners would be required to appoint building professionals to assess the safety level of their buildings and to recommend appropriate corrective actions. In order to ensure uniform standards and easy administration, the Hong Kong Government intends to publish assessment guidelines. One of the major safety aspects the guidelines will addresses is fire safety, since, over the past few years, several large, tragic fires have occurred in the city's high-rises. This article proposes a fuzzy fire safety assessment approach based on fire risk ranking techniques that may form part of the safety evaluation tool for existing buildings. The basic principles of the system are briefly described, and its implementation is outlined.