Literature Review of Fire Risk Assessment Methodologies

This paper provides a review of recent work in the area of fire risk assessment and its application. For completeness, the paper covers the following areas: basics of fire risk assessment, types of fire risk assessment methods, and comprehensive fire risk assessment models. The first section provides information on the definition of fire risk, measures of fire risk, acceptable fire risk levels, and the relationship between fire risk assessment and performance-based codes. In the following section, the types of fire risk assessment methods, such as qualitative and semi-quantitative, are briefly introduced, while more emphasis is given to quantitative methods. A number of existing comprehensive fire risk assessment models are described in more detail, including CESARE-Risk in Australia, FiRECAM and FIERAsystem in Canada, CRISP in UK, and the quantitative risk assessment model of Lund University. In addition, a brief description of a risk assessment model currently being developed at Carleton University is presented. 1. BASICS OF FIRE RISK ASSESS-