The status and needs for implementation of Fire Safety Engineering approach in Europe

• Main Authors: ATHANASOPOULOU Adamantia, SCIARRETTA Francesca, SOUSA Luisa, DIMOVA Silvia
• Language: English
• Published: Publications Office of the European Union 2023
• Subjects: Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC131689; https://doi.org/10.2760/031591; https://doi.org/10.2760/750618

Fire safety in the built environment remains a major societal issue in the European countries, despite improvements achieved by implementation of fire safety strategies. Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) applies engineering methods to the development or assessment of designs in the built environment, through the analysis of specific fire scenarios or quantification of risk for a group of fire scenarios. This report presents the results of an enquiry, coordinated by the European Commission JRC in November 2020-October 2021, addressed to the principal fire regulators of all EU MS, 3 EFTA MS (Iceland, Norway and Switzerland) and 2 countries with National Standardisation Bodies members of European Standardisation Committee CEN (United Kingdom and Serbia). The enquiry aimed to collect and assess the information necessary to facilitate the provision of guidance for a wider application of the FSE approach and its possible incorporation in the national regulatory framework and/or practices. It is concluded that the FSE approach is not fully implemented at the current state, even in case of recently issued or updated national regulations. In principle, the need to implement the performance-based approach in the future is widely acknowledged in the countries. Work is needed to ensure the availability of performance-based methods for fire design, the feasibility of FSE-based fire design, especially for innovative buildings, and the standardisation supporting design scenarios, design fire and safety criteria. JRC.E.3 - Safety and Security of Buildings