Fire safety requirements on opening heritage buildings to public access

Abstract eng:
In opening heritage buildings for public access, fire safety is an important issue. Most of the old buildings would not have adequate fire safety provisions expected by the new practices. The means of escape for visitors, means of access for firefighters and fire resistance construction requirement are all not adequate. No fire codes are worked out specifically for heritage buildings in many places of the world including Hong Kong. Performance-based design (PBD) or Fire Engineering Approach (FEA) is adopted to determine fire safety provisions. However, many flawed concepts were applied in fire hazard assessment involving heritage buildings. For example, only smoke spread is considered for small wooden buildings. Fire spread over burning wood surface was not included. In this presentation, fire safety requirements for heritage buildings in Hong Kong will be reviewed. Problems and many mistakes made in PBD-FEA will be discussed. The occupational safety and health effect on firemen should be taken into consideration. As it is difficult to upgrade both passive and active fire protection, appropriate fire safety management should be worked out carefully.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket