DEVELOPMENT OF PERFORMANCE-BASED CODES , PERFORMANCE CRITERIA AND FIRE SAFETY ENGINEERING METHODS

This paper presents the results of a literature survey, undertaken by the National Research Council of Canada, on the efforts to move from prescriptive building regulations to performance-based regulations. This survey has revealed that, in recent years, in many countries around the world, building codes are moving from prescriptiveto performance-based requirements. This increasing world-wide tendency to move toward performance-based codes is due, in part, to the negative aspects of the prescriptive codes, to advances made in fire science and engineering, to the need for codes to use fire safety engineering principles within the context of their regulations, and to the global harmonization of regulation systems. In addition, a performance-based code approach improves the regulatory environment by establishing clear code objectives and safety criteria and leaving the means of achieving these objectives to the designer. Hence, the codes will be more flexible in allowing innovation and more functional. Performance-based codes will also permit the use of modelling tools for measuring the performance of any number of design alternatives against the established safety levels. In this way, improved fire safety designs at reduced costs might be achieved. This paper also describes the required steps for developing performance-based codes. The description outlines a set of objectives formulated based on a combination of international formulations. Also presented are some of the performance design criteria for quantifying the desired fire safety objectives and some of the existing fire safety design tools for quantifying the performance objectives. The full utilization of the existing tools in performance-based design will depend on the systems in place to educate fire designers and fire officials in their use and their continued validation with realistic fire test data. Finally, a brief discussion about the necessary design documentation to be submitted to authorities for approval of the fire safety design is outlined.