Analysis of the Schiphol Cell Complex fire using a Bayesian belief net based model

In the night of the 26 and 27 October 2005, a fire broke out in the K-Wing of the Schiphol Cell Complex near Amsterdam. Eleven of 43 occupants of this wing died due to smoke inhalation. The Dutch Safety Board analysed the fire and released a report 1 year later. This article presents how a probabilistic model based on Bayesian networks can be used to analyse such a fire. The paper emphasises the usefulness of the model for this analysis. In additional it discusses the applicability for prioritisation of the recommendations such as those posed by the investigation board for the improvements of fire safety in special buildings. The big advantage of the model is that it can be used not only for fire analyses after accidents, but also prior to the accident, for example in the design phase of the building, to estimate the outcome of a possible fire given different possible scenarios. This contribution shows that if such a model was used before the fire occurred the number of fatalities would have not come as a surprise, since the model predicts a larger percentage of people dying than happened in the real fire.

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