Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Khulna, Bangladesh
PERFORMANCE BASED FIRE SAFETY MANAGEMENT IN COMMERCIAL MIXED USE BUILDINGS OF BANGLADESH
Atik Sarraz1 and Dr. Engr. Mohammod Aktarul Islam Chowdhury2
2
Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology,Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh, email: aic_cee@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT The modern approach to fire safety design move forward to performance based fire safety engineering which started about 15 years ago in developed industrial countries. The regulations of Bangladesh national building code (BNBC 1993) like Fire Resistance Rating(FRR) as passive protection has come to fall down in recent fire incidents occurred in different commercial mixed use buildings like Bashundhara city, BSEC Bhavan. A detailed survey was conducted to a typical commercial mixed use building in Dhaka city incorporating the process of data collection involved the collection of fire statistics data from BFSCD (Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defense). Based on the results of data analysis and previous study a fire risk estimate is determined using an Event Tree Analysis (ETA). The important findings of the study includes the high risk of fire in commercial mixed use building with inappropriate fire safety measure both in the fire department and building inspection. The results obtained from the study focuses as the barrier of optimum fire safety are inappropriate installation of fire inspection, failure of human response to suppress fire, inappropriate response of fire brigade, lack of training of occupants in response to fire. The results from ETA analys concluded the most cost effective scenario with a ranked form.
Keywords: Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA), Event Tree Analysis (ETA), Smoke Detection System, Fire
Fighters Action Time(FAT), Manual Fire Fighting, Fire Resistance Rating(FRR).
1. INTRODUCTION Fire is one of the earliest innovations of civilization and an essential part of our existence on the earth. Still it is the name of a dreaded demon which burns everything into ashes when it gets out of control. Fire can cause widespread destruction within no time and is one of most feared scourge of modern civilization; fire, if not manageable, can be disastrous for human settlements. Urban settlements of the world are more vulnerable to fire hazard due to the involvement of huge population in economic activities, industrial and other activities. Urban fire incidence is alarmingly increasing all over Bangladesh particularly in larger urban centers. Although the rate of incidence is high, it may be controlled by taking proper management of fire safety through addressing the present risks. In Bangladesh the expansion of commercial mixed use building is notified due to its rapid urbanization during last decades. Especially the utility of the building ranges from the market place, commercial space, offices to residential apartments. But the most vulnerable thing is the improper management of fire safety of the commercial mixed use buildings. Fire incidence is one of such phenomena which is at present causing huge economic loss as well as tragedy of human death in frequent manner. The death numbers due to the accidents were 102, 269, 214, 92 in the years 2008 to 2011. Apart from death tragedy total economic losses were estimated 230.93, 305.90, 326.461, 554.15 crore taka at the same years (BFSCDA, 2011). 2. OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF THE STUDY
In the preliminary approach of methodology the secondary data are collected from the relevant publications, newspapers and Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defense (BFCD) official records up to 2011. A field survey is also conducted for assessing the system installments for fire safety of the building (sample) properties like building geometry, combustible materials etc. Data analysis procedure comprises with a time series analysis of relevant data from secondary data collection. Risk assessment procedure combined with the Event Tree Analysis (ETA) followed here as clearly described in Hagg (1999). Risk assessment procedure also conducted a probabilistic simulation called monte carlo simulation for the sensitivity of the estimated risks by a software packages @Risk 5.7.
4. DATA ANALYSIS 4.1 Fire Incidences Scenario Regarding Commercial Mixed Use Building The incidences scenario is most alarming from the last two or three decades. The data base of Bangladesh Fire Service and Civil Defense (BFCD) keeps the through and compact records of all fire incidences during last decades. The data base oriented with several types as like : 1. 2. 3. Number of accidents with time and occupancy basis. Accident causes with both the monthly and yearly basis. Causality and Property damages in causes and occupancy basis.
The fire incidences from 2008 to 2011 in Bangladesh were 9310, 12182, 11857, 13041 whereas in Dhaka city the incidences were 3103, 3746, 3879, 3998. In last ten years the rate is increased notably [Fig: 1]. In case of commercial mixed use building the number of accidents were 2249, 2597, 2075, 2254 throughout the whole country. This covers a rate of 24%, 21.3%,17.5%, 17.3% of total accidents. The major causes of fire incidents are electric wiring and cooking appliances as recorded (BFCDA,2011). Electric wiring fire responsible for about 40%, 37%, 42%, 36% of total fire incidences from 2008 to 2011 meanwhile cooking appliances responses from about 23% to 24% during those years.
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Total Accidents
Figure 1: Reported Fire Incidents in Bangladesh (2001 (2001-2011) This is most st alarming in the rate of economic losses which were 76%, 92%, 74%, 76% of the total property losses, that were 230.9, 305.9, 326.4, 554.15 crore taka from 2008 to 2011[figure: 2]. The losses represent a scatter percentage rate for sometimes equal rate or sometimes with excessive growth of rate. 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Commercial Mixed Use Building Total Losses
Fig: 2 Economic Losses due to Fire Incidences (2001 (2001-2011) In case of causalities the number death is of 23, 47, 38, and 24 in last four years which makes a significant percentage total death. The figure of de death ath rate does not show the complete scenario that is more devastating from the real scenario. 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Commercial Mixed Use Building Total Death
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Figure 3: Number of Death in Fire Incidents (2001-2011) In 2011, almost 3130 fire accidents originated from the kitchen burner which can be identified as the second important reason for fire incidents[figure: [figure: 3] 3]. Every year few intentional fires(Arson) caused in Dhaka city. In the year of 2010 and 2011 intentional fire causes about 245 and 652 accidents but in most of the cases the overall loss due to this reason is very high. Intentional tentional fire is one of the important issues for Dhaka city which is generally the outcome of interpersonal conflict, political destabilization and social unrest, especially in slum areas (Monowarul and Neelopal, 2008). 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Suspected Arson
Figure 4: Causes of Fire Incidents (2001-2011) 4.2 Capability of Fire Department The capability and efficiency of BFCD is quite vulnerable that was observed from the scenario of field survey and previous study. The township of Bangladesh has been developed in an enormous rate but the life supporting facilities are not developing in the proportionate rate. From an study of 2008, there were only 13 fire f stations with an average of 35 employees along with two vehicles(one water tendon another is pump) for each station in Dhaka city (Monowarul and Neelopal, 2008). . The present scenario is not most reliable at all. In case of the efficiency of fire department the recovery of resources were 104, 116, 279 crore taka where whereas the losses were 306, 326, 554 crore taka from 2009 to 2011(figure 5). This values signify the certain portion of efficiency at a percentage rate of 25%, 26%, 33.5% during the years. In n the year of 2007 and 2008 the recovery rate of resources by fire department were about 67% where in the year from 2003 to 2006 the efficiency of fire department were also reasonable with a rate of approximately 50%.
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Figure 5: Efficiency of Fire Services. The instrumental cost for fire departmen department 33, 39, 47, 38 crore taka for the year of 2007-08 08 to 2010-11(figure 2010 6). In the comparison of the costs to the recovery rate the ratio varies from 0.05 to 0.2.The number of manpower and equipments are also very insufficient compared to the present population of Bangladesh especially in the metropolitan cities like Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet.
Recovery of Resources
Instrumental Cost
Figure 6: Instrumental Cost in Different Fiscal year In 2001, there were only an average of 35 fire fighters and two veh vehicles icles for each station of Dhaka city. That means, each fire station has to serve almost 1 million people of the city where the ratio of the citizen and Manpower is 26,905: 1 and the ratio of the citizen and vehicle is 470,833: 1( Monowarul and Neelopal, 2008).
In recent year of 2011 the facilities of fire department in Dhaka city are summarizes below :
Number of Station 12
Manpower
Vehicles
35
07
2nd 3rd
11 08
27 26
05 03
0.542:1 0.22:1
0.17:1 0.067:1
0.92:1 0.58:1
Table 1: Comparison of Fire Departments Facilities There is only one first class station to serve about one million people where there is only one vehicle to serve about 1.6 million people in Dhaka city. As a whole there are only 31 stations to serve a population of about 1.75 million. This is representative figure of the countrys most developed city. So the other scenario of country might be predicted to be worse than Dhaka city. The under construction project of fire station is only two, one of which is in Khilgaon and another one is in Dhamrai of Dhaka city. There are four project under land acquisition. So the situation has no chance to increase within a short time. 5 FIRE RISK ASSESSMENT
Fire risk can be dened as the product of the occurrence likelihood and the expected consequence for each re scenario (Sekizawa, 2005). For re risk for life safety, the expected consequence is the expected number of casualties for each re scenario. Therefore, the objective of re risk for life safety is to determine the occurrence likelihood and the expected number of casualties for each re scenario. Designing proper re scenarios is essential for performance-based re protection design. For the reason that there are many factors inuencing re spread and smoke movement, such as the fuel characteristics, the building geometry and re protection systems, various re scenarios may occur. For a specic building, the operational reliability of re protection systems plays an important role in the occurrence of dierent re scenarios (Chu, 2007). 5.1 Model Building Overview
Prior to the fire risk assessment, it is significant to define the characteristics of the model building. Two approaches were carried out to define a base building for the analysis. These included: 1. 2. Site visits to the existing high-rise buildings in Dhaka, November 2011. Review of high-rise building plans(table 2).
Table 2: Sample Building Parameter Parameter Area Height of Each Floor Values 8500 ft2 11.5 ft
Total Height No. of Exists Occupant Number (Person per floor) Market Spaces Offices
80.5 ft 3 150 67 48
With respect to consider the inuence of the operational reliability of re protection systems on dierent re scenarios, event tree method is employed. Since the majority of casualties in re is caused by inhalation of smoke, four basic events inuencing smoke movement are considered: Smoke detection system (SDS) , Sprinkler system (SS), Manual Fire Service Suppression, which is further separated into two parts: Firefighters action time (FAT) and Manual Fire Fighting(MFF) and Fire Resistance Rating(FRR) 5.2.1 Structuring the Event Tree Branch Logic The event tree logic is read off from the source (A) on the left hand side, through the pathways (B - F). There are two outcome segments, Yes/No, for each pathway factors, where Yes implies success and No implies failure. The probability of the various consequences is then calculated by multiplying together the various branch probabilities of each factor. The pathway factors of the event tree are developed as follow: Smoke detection system (SDS) - Success/ Failure Sprinkler system (SS) - Success/ Failure or not installed Manual Fire Service suppression, which is further separated into two parts: -Firefighters action time (FAT): the time between when the Fire Service is alerted and when the firefighters start to fight the fire is less than 30 minutes - Success/ Failure -Manual Fire Fighting (MFF) - Success/ Failure Fire Resistance Rating (FRR) - Success/ Failure.
The event tree is shown as Figure: 8. Fire Ignition(A) SDS(B) SS(C) FAT(D) MFF(E) FRR(F) Scenario
Yes No
2 3
5 6
Figure 7: Event Tree of Fire Scenarios Where: SDS = Smoke detection system (B); SS = Sprinkler system (C); FAT = Firefighters action time (D) MFF = Manual fire fighting (E); FRR = Fire Resistance Rating (F) 3.3.2.2 Description of Several Events Outcome Event 1 Smoke Detection System : Success Sprinkler System : Success - Early detection and fire alarm is expected; Firefighter Action Time : Not necessary - Fire is controlled by sprinkler systems; Manual Fire Fighting : Not necessary Wall Barrier Integrity : Success 2 Smoke Detection System : Success Sprinkler System : Failure Firefighter Action Time : Success Manual Fire Fighting : Success - Fire is controlled by the firefighters; Wall Barrier Integrity : Success - Fire may not be suppressed immediately but confinement in the room of ignition source is expected Table 3: Description Typical Events of Event Tree. 3.3.2.3 System Reliability Data - Fire may not be suppressed immediately but confinement in the room of ignition source is expected -Fire is detected by smoke detectors; - Early detection and fire alarm is expected; - Firefighters take action to fight the fire within 30 minutes since the Fire Service is alerted. Description of Event -Fire is detected by both smoke detectors and sprinkler heads;
Fire Fighter Action Time (FAT) may vary from ten minutes to two hour maximum according to the experiences of BFCD officials. In most of the cases it is unable to start fire fighting within thirty minutes (as stated above) due to
Table 4: System Reliability Data (BFCD officials; Kwok-Lung Ng, 2006; Lu S. et.al., 2011 ) In case of Manual Fire Fighting (MFF) the success rate depends on the availability of modern equipments, availability of professional fire fighters and heat, smoke and fire load density of fire etc. The success rate vary from only 15-30% without any life damage according to the view of high officials of BFCD. If the FAT within 30 minutes can be maintained properly success rate increases to 40-60% with lower availability of modern equipments. 3.3.2.4 Fire Resistance Rating (FRR) The primary purposes of fire separation construction are: 1) To prevent spread of fire to other parts of the building; 2) To maintain the buildings structural integrity; 3) To provide a sufficient tenability along escape routes for some specified period of time. The selection of the fire resistance rating (FRR) for building construction often depends on the fire load density, ventilation factor and conversion factor, as mentioned in the Fire Engineering Design Guide (Proter A, 2003). In order to estimate the probability of the Fire Resistance Rating (FRR) it is necessary to determine the probability of the equivalent time of fire exposure. If the equivalent time of fire exposure is over the provided FRR, the wall barrier is considered to have failed to maintain the construction integrity. The elaborate equations for calculating the equivalent time of fire exposure are described in the Fire engineering design guide (Proter A, 2003). 1. 2. 3. 4. Wood or Wooden faade Foam Cloths False ceiling (Gypsum Board)
FRR construction
Success/Failure
Foam
Cloths
False ceiling
30 minute
Success Failure
1 hour
Success Failure
2 hour
Success Failure
3 hour
Success Failure
Risk estimation is a process for assigning the frequencies and consequences of the hazardous event into various levels of risk. It can be expressed in terms of the likelihood of incident outcomes (outcomes probability) and the consequences (translated into the EMV) Based on these defined probability distributions, Monte Carlo simulations for the fire risk estimation were conducted using @Risk5.7. In the simulations, the settings generally follow the default choice except for the sampling type and the number of iterations. In the simulations, Monte Carlo is selected as the type of sampling. For the number of iterations, a trial-and-error method is used. It is found that the results would have no significant differences when the number of iterations rises above 5,000. Hence, 5,000 iterations are considered to be sufficient for the simulation. Consequence of fire can generally be categorized into one of the followings: 1. 2. Property damage Life safety exposure
Due to lacking of the available data of statistical life values of Bangladeshi people, we have been conducted this estimation by taking property damages into consideration. The property losses are estimated for equivalent risk calculation of each scenario. Due to unavailability of proper data of previous years the property losses from the year of 2008 to 2011 are estimated for risk calculation. Total property losses in this four years are 132.934 crore taka per thousand fire accidents. Event No Property losses per Property losses per Event No Property losses per
Table 6: Consequences Calculation for Each Scenario of Event tree 3.3.2.5 Probability distribution of Risk :
A sample risk estimation are shown here for 30 minutes FRR construction and the wooden faade materials. The simulation result of @Risk 5.7 software package is also shown for the conveniences of interpretation. Scenario 1 : 30 minutes FRR, Wooden Faade fire
FAT
MFF
------
FRR Probabilities Consequence Risk/incident of each (loss in outcome Taka) 1.00 0.469 0.00417
0.008906 0.021934 0.021934 0.02804 0.021934 0.021934 0.02804 0.0119 0.0266 0.0266
0.505 0.07 0.203 0.505 0.07 0.203 0.505 0.07 0.203 0.505 0.07 0.797 0.505 0.07 0.797 0.505 0.07 0.797 0.494 0.93 -----
7.92 * 10-5 0.000 1.00* 10-4 1.39 *10-4 0.000 6.169 * 10-4 5.462 * 10-3 9.3898 * 10-5 0.000
1st International Conference on Civil Engineering for Sustainable Development (ICCESD-2012) 11 12 13 14 0.494 0.07 0.203 0.494 0.07 0.797 0.494 0.07 0.797 0.494 0.07 0.797 0.497 0.225 0.775 0.775 1.00 1.00 0.00 1.00 Total 0.05 0.0062 0.000 0.0214 1.0000 1.77 * 10-3 1.65 * 10-4 0.000 7.576 * 10-4 0.013293
Note that the values above only shows the mean values of the distributions Table 7: Risk estimation for property damages. Simulation result of @Risk 5.7
The result of the risk estimation concludes that the 30 minutes FRR construction for combustible material of gypsum board (false ceiling) make reasonably low risk of fire. Overall, it is found that scenarios with a sprinkler system, such as Scenario 6 to Scenario 10, would generally have higher benefit values than scenarios with no sprinkler protection, such as Scenario 1 to Scenario 5. As the results of the risk analysis, Scenario 6 is found to be the economically best option and followed by scenarios having a higher FRR construction.
4.
Discussion
At the discussion of the study the problems related to the fire safety management are concluded into three categories; 1. 2. 3. Constraint of Fire department to minimize risks of fire. Constraint due to building construction (Passive protection). Constraints due to improper safety in building system.
Constraints of Fire department: Lower number of manpower and modern equipments. Lower number of station provided for serving a largest portion of population. Late response of fire department due to traffic congestion and narrow wide of streets. Lacking in the governmental budget for fire department.
Constraints due to building construction: BNBC code have a regulation for construction type to meet the requirements of fire safety of different types of building like industrial, mixed use, market, residential etc. But in our field survey of eight different mixed use building of Dhaka and Sylhet city, we have found the significant lacking in the construction practices to maintain the requirements of BNBC code. Faulty architectural plan for fire safety also be witnessed in our field survey especially in case of the position, height and orientation of atrium in commercial mixed use building. There is also a modern practice of interior design to use a larger amount of combustible materials (not intentionally) to decorate the office, market spaces which have a large amount of fire load with longer duration of heat release rate (HRR). Constraints due to improper safety in building system: There several code practices to make license or clearance from corresponding authorities to evaluate the standard of fire safety installments like sprinkler system, smoke detection, smoke evacuation system etc. But the observation of the field survey concludes that the practices for fire safety installment are not complete to take the clearances of authorities. In several cases modern equipments are installed but the people are not quite aware of the uses of this equipments or they are not trained enough.