188体育

Background and methodology

Background

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) is a UK government department charged with supporting communities across the UK to thrive, making them great places to live and work. A key part of the department鈥檚 remit is to maintain 鈥楢pproved Documents鈥� which describe ways to meet building regulations in England.

In England and Wales, the legal requirements for fire safety in buildings are described in Schedule 1, Part B of the Building Regulations. Statutory guidance on how to meet the fire safety requirements of the building regulations in England are set out in Approved Document B (ADB).

In response to Dame Judith Hackitt鈥檚 independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety, which resulted from the Grenfell Tower tragedy of June 2017, the government committed to a full-scale technical review of ADB. The review started with a call for evidence which invited views on the technical issues and improvements that could be made to ADB. While the primary objective of the regulations and ADB is life safety, the call for evidence uncovered concerns from respondents that insufficient attention is given to protection of buildings in fire safety regulations.

Methodology and scope

The aim of this work is to conduct a review of literature and evidence on approaches intended to reduce property damage in the event of a fire, including how other countries approach the issue of property protection through building regulations or equivalent industry guidance.

The main methodological approach is a structured and systematic Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) of the most relevant and up to date academic literature (published since 1st January 2015) and different countries鈥� legislation, codes, standards and industry guidance. This was combined with liaison and interviews with key stakeholders within the UK and in each of the comparator countries.

Countries were selected on the basis of covering a broad geographical spread and a range of different approaches to fire regulations (prescriptive vs. performance-based). While prescriptive frameworks define the mechanisms by which the final output must be produced, performance-based frameworks 鈥� rather than defining the specific ways in which a building must be constructed 鈥� set out functional statements about how a building must perform in the event of a fire.

The countries included within this review, and their approach to fire regulation, is illustrated in the table below.听

Country	Prescriptive	Performance-based
England and Wales	鉁�	鉁�
Northern Ireland	鉁�	鉁�
Scotland	鉁�	鉁�
USA	鉁�	听
Germany	鉁�	听
Sweden	鉁�	鉁�
New Zealand	听	鉁�
Australia	听	鉁�
Japan	听	鉁�
Singapore	鉁�	听

In addition, a high-level review of Switzerland鈥檚 approach is included to illustrate an alternative to the typical prescriptive and performance-based approaches.

Property protection

The fire protection of buildings and property involves both the protection of buildings as physical assets from fire, but also measures to ensure continuity of building operations and to minimise disruption to building functions. Property protection also encompasses measures to reduce the social and environmental consequences of fires.

The insurance industry plays an important role in promoting measures to protect buildings and property from fire. Insurance companies will often insist on higher design specifications or property protection systems for buildings deemed to be higher risk. The industry has recently highlighted the insurance challenges posed by modern construction methods such as mass timber construction.

The protection of properties and buildings from fire relies on both passive and active fire protection measures. Typical measures designed to protect property from fire include: longer fire resistance durations for compartmentation; limitations on the use of combustible materials; provision of automatic fire suppression systems (such as sprinklers); use of early automatic fire detection and alarms systems, and; measures to minimise arson and intentional ignition of fires.

International regulatory approaches and building typologies

Domestic buildings

The primary objective of national building and fire safety regulations for residential buildings, in all of the countries reviewed, is life safety.

In some countries 鈥� such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden and the USA 鈥� a degree of property protection is achieved through the principle of limiting fire spread, both between and within buildings. This principle is historically rooted in these countries鈥� building legislation and applies equally to high-rise domestic buildings and to individual dwellinghouses.

However, this review found no empirical evidence to link any of these strategies focused on limiting fire spread to a higher level of property protection or stronger building resilience.

Industrial buildings

Warehouses are often afforded a higher level of property protection as these buildings are usually subjected to stricter requirements in national building regulations.

These stricter requirements reflect both the unique nature of hazards typical to warehouses, where stored goods have the potential to act as fire load, but also the high potential economic losses associated with warehouses fires, resulting from destruction of commercial stock and loss of jobs. This review found that 鈥� of the countries studied 鈥� sprinklers are almost always mandatory. Furthermore, warehouse size thresholds, which place limits on the size of un-sprinklered warehouses, are also generally much lower than in England.

Commercial buildings

Fire safety requirements for commercial buildings in most countries rarely exceed the minimum provisions necessary to secure life safety. Requirements for additional fire protection 鈥� such as automatic sprinkler systems or high levels of fire resistance 鈥� are generally specified only for larger commercial buildings, such as shopping centres, or multi-storey department stores which exceed the building design allowances specified in national regulations.

Schools

Several countries have building regulations with stricter requirements for schools. In some cases, such as Scotland and New Zealand, these requirements are explicitly described as measures intended to protect the physical fabric of the school buildings. Mandatory sprinklers in schools are also commonplace.

Stricter requirements reflect the fact that schools are often seen as important service providing-buildings and community resources. These requirements are designed to minimise disruption to education and ensure continuity of function as an amenity to the community.

Historic buildings

Historic buildings often have unique fire safety requirements, as these buildings, along with their contents, typically have social and cultural value. However, historic buildings are rarely assigned specific building categories in building regulations and so fire safety provisions for these types of buildings are often no different to domestic buildings.

In some countries 鈥� such as the USA and Germany 鈥� there is specific guidance on fire safety for historic buildings. In this case of the USA, fire codes for historic buildings focus on measures designed to minimise the likelihood of fire ignition, rather than on passive and active fire protection. This is both to minimise the impact of fire protection features on the character of the building, but also to ensure that important cultural resources are not damaged by mechanisms such as water-based fire suppression systems.

Thematic analysis

Robustness and resilience of buildings

Academic research into the fire resilience of buildings is scarce. The few studies which have been undertaken tend to focus on active fire protection measures, most notably sprinklers, as the most effective means of enhancing building resilience and protecting property from fire.

Research which examines the contribution of structural elements of buildings, such as fire resisting construction, to fire resilience is scarcer still. The paucity of research in this area is most likely a consequence of methodological approaches to assessing building behaviour in fire, which tend to focus on the responses of individual structural elements to fire, rather than whole building structures.

Buildability

The shift towards modern, low-carbon and sustainable construction materials and techniques in recent decades arguably has consequences for the fire resilience of buildings. Recent research suggests that the sustainability agenda in construction 鈥� and the drive to construct 鈥榞reen鈥� buildings with low embodied carbon 鈥� has the potential to conflict with fire safety and resilience. In particular, research has highlighted critical vulnerabilities in certain building methods such as mass timber construction and modular construction. For mass timber buildings, questions remain over the achievability of 鈥榮elf-extinguishment鈥�, while for modular construction, concerns centre on the existence of internal voids and cavities, which have the potential to act as pathways for fire spread, as well as the use of combustible materials.

Competence

Issues relating to competence in property protection tend to overlap with broader competency issues in the building regulation sector more generally. Findings from recent research and stakeholders suggest that many of those working in the building regulatory system in the UK do not possess the level of skills or competence needed to implement greater fire safety provisions aimed at protecting buildings and property.

Competence is seen as lacking both at the building design stage, but also at the building control and planning stage, as well as in the construction and installer industries more broadly.

Societal and environmental impacts

The destruction of a whole building by fire can have a devastating impact on the environment (through CO2 release and water run-off from firefighting activities) and on the economy and society (through dislocation of businesses and residents).

While the environmental impacts of fire are well documented in published literature, especially relating to the impact of gaseous emissions and the environmental benefits of active fire protection, considerably less research has been conducted into the economic and societal impacts of building fires. Statistics on fire incidents compiled by Fire Safe Europe suggest that the economic impact of fire accounts for up to 1% of GDP each year in most advanced countries.

This review identified no empirical research into the cost of disruption caused by fire to key services, nor any studies into societal benefits of strengthening the fire protection of buildings and property.

Key messages

To what extent is property protection explicit in international building regulations and codes?

The primary objective of all national building and fire safety regulations reviewed here is life safety. Some countries have strategies through which protection of property is achieved via the principle of limiting fire spread, as well as stricter requirements for certain types of buildings (such as warehouses and schools). However, this review found that most of the guidelines designed specifically to protect buildings and property from fire are non-statutory in nature (such as businesses and residents).

What are the drivers for property protection internationally?

Drivers for property protection in international codes and regulations are not always clear. For industrial and commercial buildings, the overarching driver for property protection is likely the need to ensure business continuity, driven by the insurance industry, through measures intended to minimise economic losses and environmental damage. For schools, property protection is most likely driven by the desire to minimise disruption to education.

The drivers for protection of historic buildings can be argued to be a combination of the two: continuity of business (e.g., in the case of a museum or gallery) and preservation of a structure which may hold cultural significance to a community.

To what extent is which property protection achieved through life safety?

Life protection measures will, by default, protect property and vice versa. Several of the countries reviewed here have fire safety requirements which go above and beyond the guidance set out in Approved Document B, and which, in some cases, also offer a higher level of protection to buildings and properties. However, in most cases these requirements are intended principally as life safety mechanisms and any protection they afford to buildings is an unintended consequence of the life safety function.

A key finding of this review is that there is no empirical evidence to indicate the extent to which property protection is achieved through life safety.

How can property protection be achieved?

While there are a range of measures (both active and passive) which can help to protect buildings and property from fire, this review has found that active fire protection measures 鈥� most notably automatic fire sprinkler systems 鈥� are especially prominent in literature about property protection and building resilience.

Mandatory sprinklers are common in international fire safety regulations, especially for buildings deemed to require additional protection (such as warehouses and schools), and sprinklers feature heavily in non-statutory guidelines for the fire protection of buildings and property. Research into the fire resilience of buildings also tends to emphasise sprinklers as the primary method of protecting buildings from fire and ensuring resilience, a point which is also underlined by numerous stakeholders. However, the rationale for sprinkler use is not always explicitly set out in international building regulations.

Empirical research examining the impact of fire resisting construction on building resilience is relatively scarce. However, findings from the Japanese Building Standard Law, which emphasises more passive fire protection through the provision of 鈥榝ire resistive buildings鈥�, would indicate that effective fire resilience can also be achieved through higher durations of fire resisting construction.