Scheme for determining additional fire safety provisions for tall buildings

Consequent to many building fires not initiated from accidents but leading to big disasters, current fire safety provisions are demonstrated to be insufficient to protect buildings under big fires. Enhancement or improvement should be provided for the existing fire safety provisions in dealing with non-accidental fires. However, it might not be necessary to revise the existing building codes to give additional protection against arson and terrorist attack fires, as not all buildings are likely to be attacked. An assessment scheme, based on some identified risk parameters, is proposed to assess tall buildings to determine whether additional fire safety provisions on top of protecting against accidental fires are required. Six areas of attributes in relation to passive building design, fire service installations, fire safety management, social issues, political issues, and others were proposed in the scheme. It is suggested to determine the relative risk of having non-accidental fires by calculating a "score" of the building on severity and probability of these parameters individually. The highest "score" is employed as a "risk index" for determining whether additional fire safety provisions for existing or new buildings, especially the ultra high-rise, should be provided.