Fire safety regulations for housing in Europe compared

There is still a broad variety of systems of technical requirements for buildings in the various European countries, despite the existence of the Construction Products Directive of the European Union and the development of Euro Codes. The goals and topics are quite similar, and most countries call their regulations 'performance based,' but a detailed study reveals considerable variety of functional requirements, performance requirements, and specifications, with inconsistency within the requirements of some countries.

2008

There is still broad variety of systems of technical requirements for buildings in the various European countries, despite the existence of the Construction Products Directive of the European Union and the development of Euro Codes. The goals and topics are quite similar, but detailed study reveals considerable variety of functional requirements, performance requirements, and specifications, with inconsistency within the requirements of some countries.

The public responsibility for guaranteeing a minimum quality for houses is regulated in national sets of technical building regulations. Most West-European countries call their regulations 'performance based' and the goals and major subjects are quite similar. A more detailed look at the formulation and content of the sets of requirements, however shows quite fundamental differences. Research into the differences in formulations is a first and important step towards better mutual understanding of national sets of building regulations which is essential to start a discussion of the possibilities of further harmonisation of the systems of the various countries. This paper presents the results and conclusions of a comparative study of the building regulations in Belgium, Denmark, England, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. The systems and formulations of the requirements and the contents of some subjects of requirements for houses have been compared in detail:...

All papers submitted to COBRA were assessed by expert panel, drawn from the construction and building research community, The conference organisers wish to extend their appreciation to the members of the panel for their work, which is invaluable to the success of COBRA.

Fire Technology

In Germany, building codes relating to fire safety are mainly prescriptive nature. Therefore, fire safety engineering is based on a combination of expert judgment and reverse engineering of prescriptive rules. This necessitates to connect the given objectives with the detailed prescriptive rules—if not already described within the law or bylaw. This paper proposes a table relating the fire safety objectives of European building regulations and their German counterpart with the prescriptive model building code in Germany. In addition, a risk curve for prenormative work is also given. This represents the prescriptive regulations concerning in terms of fatalities of a level acceptable to society and emphasizes the lower degree of acceptance of multiple fatalities occurring in a single incident. This residual risk limit represents the opinion of German firefighting associations. Data taken from the London area supports the suggested slope rate, as the level of safety in Britain is simil...

2010

The purpose of this paper is to compare technical building regulations in European Union (EU) countries. Three research questions are addressed: what are the main differences and similarities? what are the main types of organization and formulation? what are the main trends and developments? The following tasks were carried out in order to provide an answer to these questions: preparing a questionnaire and obtaining answers from experts of EU countries, collecting and analysing main building regulations, and comparing results. The results are that, in the majority of the EU countries, central authorities are involved in setting technical building regulations, however the involvement of regional and local authorities varies. Technical building regulations can be set in one main document, a coordinated group of documents or separated legal documents. The formulation adopted for most subjects is performance based, combined with functional or prescriptive requirements for specific subje...

Architecture, Civil Engineering, Environment, 2019

In light of the spread of residential fires worldwide, this paper aims to identify the current fire safety code requirements for providing the minimum level of safety in residential facilities, hence, mitigating the risk of fire occurrence. The paper also presents the findings of a case study to demonstrate the compliance level of a sample residential facility, with code requirements. The case study building is composed of three floors and a basement. It can accommodate 214 persons. It was built in 2013, and it is located in Khobar, Saudi Arabia. The study revealed that the assessed facility had an adequate distribution of fire detection and notification systems. Moreover, the level of the housekeeping practices and concentration of hazardous material was found to be acceptable. However, the means of egress, fire doors and fire suppression systems were not up to code requirements. The study recommended measures to improve the level of safety in the building. These include increasing...

International Journal on Engineering Performance-Based Fire Codes, 2007

Consequent to several big fires since the Garley Building fire in 1996, the Fire Safety (Buildings) Ordinance [FS(B)O], Chapter 572, Laws of Hong Kong was enacted on 3 July 2002 to upgrade the fire safety standards of composite and domestic buildings constructed on or before 1 March 1987. As these buildings have fewer fire safety provisions than required now, there are difficulties in upgrading. Therefore, the Ordinance has not yet come into effect because of many reasons. A "Fallback Plan" for FS(B)O was implemented since 1 January 2004 by both enforcement authorities of the Ordinance. The objectives are to publicize the Ordinance, abate existing fire hazards and arouse the public on the importance of fire safety. Under this "Fallback Plan", 900 composite buildings will be inspected every year. As observed, the current fire safety requirements are taken as reference. Such requirements might not work for those old buildings. It is necessary to explore clearly the architectural features, current fire safety provisions specifications and suitability of those requirements in FS(B)O. All these areas will be discussed in this paper. The total fire safety concept is proposed. Systematic long-term research on the specifications is suggested to demonstrate whether the specifications are suitable.