Encouraging the Use of Risk Concepts in Performance-Based Building and Fire Regulation Development

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The intent of current building and fire regulations used in the United States is to provide an acceptable level of safety, health, and welfare during the design, construction and use of buildings. However, the current regulations, with their hundreds of pages of prescribed measures, do not provide explicit indications of the level of safety they are intended to achieve. To address this concern, specific goals and objectives, reflecting acceptable levels of safety, could be incorporated into the regulations. Furthermore, as building and fire regulations are intended to satisfy the public mandate for managing risks, these goals and objectives should ideally be based on the level(s) of risk acceptable or tolerable to society. To address these concerns, a mechanism is needed to obtain a better understanding of the risks to people and property from fire and natural hazards, and to better address the risks within the building regulatory system. The objective of this Joint NSF / Private Sector Initiative effort is to outline a process for developers of building and fire regulations that will aid in the identification, characterization, and incorporation of risk concepts and analysis methods into building and fire regulations. In meeting this objective, this effort will review the use of risk concepts over a broad range of regulations, review various approaches to identifying and characterizing risk problems, identify fire risk issues in building and fire codes, and outline a process for identifying, characterizing, and incorporating risk concepts and analysis methods into performance-based building and fire code development. This research will improve the understanding of risks and associated costs from fire and natural hazards, address the impact of uncertainty on the development and use of risk-based building and fire regulations (with a focus in the areas of application of new technologies and indeterminate uncertainty related to future human actions), assist codes and standards developers view, understand, and address building and fire regulation development as risk issues, and provide a basis for further development of risk- and reliability-based analysis and design tools for building and fire safety design. The information, examples, and decision-making process that will result from this effort will be a valuable addition to the area of risk-based decision making. Furthermore, by focusing on risk issues in building and fire regulation development, the private sector partners from the building and fire communities will be provided with a tool to help them better assess and address the technical risks from fire and natural hazards, to better understand values issues associated with risk decisions, such as risk perception and cost-benefit implications, and to better incorporate these concepts into the regulatory development process. Ultimately, the product of this effort will encourage changes to the building and fire regulations that will better address the risks to people and property from fire and natural hazards, resulting in safer buildings and fewer losses from fire and natural hazards.