The Evolution of HAZARD, the Fire Hazard Assessment Methodology

The United States alone spends about $700B per year on new and renovated construction. About 20% of this is to assure safety from unwanted fires, which includes the cost of insurance, to make families whole after fires and to recover from business loss. This is an enormous cost to endure every year. Combined with a growing construction market in other countries, this presents a major opportunity for the introduction of new fire safe products to the building and transportation industries and new products such as advanced detectors and suppression systems and fire fighting equipment for the fire protection industry. The intent of performance based standards is to provide flexibility in maintaining accepted fire safety from unwanted fires with new competitive products while providing an opportunity for saving lives, reducing property loss, at the same time buying a reduction in the cost of design, construction, maintenance and liability coverage. In order to derive this benefit it is necessary to have tools to evaluate building systems performance which then provide a metric for the effectiveness of design and material use. The methodology embodied in HAZARD I is intended as a tool to aid in understanding the consequences of unwanted fires. The intention of the Hazard Methodology is to make available the research that is done in pursuit of this goal. Improvements will include increased applicability of the current procedure, improved usability, the ability to address additional building features, and more accurate treatment of the fire itself and the effects of the fire on people and their actions. Many improvements have been made in the documentation which accompanies software as it has evolved. These improvements are a result of the experience fire protection engineers and others have had in using the methodology. The experience gained by having HAZARD I widely used, concomitant with the improvements which are now being incorporated constitutes the first step in the overall goal of a complete Fire Hazard Assessment Methodology.