What is this published document about?
This is the first in a series of published documents (PDs) in support of BS 7974 – a British Standard providing a framework for developing a rational methodology for designs that protect people, property and the environment from fire. The standard uses an alternative fire safety engineering approach, based on applying scientific and engineering principles.
The PDs contain guidance and information on how to undertake quantitative and detailed analysis of specific aspects of the design. They are a summary of the "state of the art" and are updated as new theories, calculation methods and data become available. They don’t preclude the use of appropriate methods and data from other sources.
This part provides information on the rate of production of heat and combustion products from the fire source.
Other parts in this series include:
- Part 2: Spread of smoke and toxic gases within and beyond the enclosure of origin
- Part 3: Structural response and fire spread beyond the enclosure of origin
- Part 4: Detection of fire and activation of fire protection systems
- Part 5: Fire service intervention
- Part 6: Evacuation
- Part 7: Probabilistic fire risk assessment
Who is this published document for?
Primary users will be fire safety engineering practitioners. Other users include:
- Members of the fire and rescue service
- Structural engineers
- Architects
- Government departments such as the Ministry of Defence
- Universities (for teaching and research)
- Regulators
- Related industries such as insurers and systems engineers
Why should you use this published document?
It provides guidance on probabilistic risk analysis in support of BS 7974. It sets out the situations in which a probabilistic risk assessment can add value to traditional deterministic analyses and outlines acceptance criteria for the assessment. Furthermore, common analysis techniques of probabilistic risk assessment are summarily discussed.
It also includes data for probabilistic risk assessment, based on fire statistics, building characteristics and reliability of fire protection systems. It does not contain guidance on techniques for hazard identification or qualitative risk analysis.
What’s changed since the last update?
This is a full revision of the 2003 document and introduces the following principal changes:
- Consolidation of all principal design fire development considerations into sub-system 1 which are subsequently called upon as an input for other sub-systems (e.g. 2 and 3)
- Greater clarity regarding the phases of fire development
- Design correlations that logically follow a conventional fire timeline of events
- Where practicable, explicit acknowledgements of the inherent assumptions underpinning design correlations
- Further generalization of design approximations for growing fires
- Revised correlations with respect to ignition, heat flux from localized fires, pre-flashover compartment fire temperatures, and sprinkler-controlled fires
- The introduction of a travelling fire framework for fully developed fires that might not develop to flashover
- Improved reference data for smoke and toxic gas yields
