Publications Risk-Informed, Performance-Based Industrial Fire Protection An Alternative to Prescriptive Codes   Excerpts: Table of Contents Preface by Dr. John Bryan From the Author, Thomas Barry Chapter 1 Testimonials  WHY RISK-INFORMED - SEE     SUMMARY BELOW   Acrobat Reader is required to read some of the excerpts.  Also some excerpts may take a little time to open but worth the wait....       Knowledge is Power Are you ready to take advantage of the benefits and cost savings of "Risk-Informed" fire safety and fire protection solutions? If so, act now and save ! 704 pages, over 300 figures and tables, numerous examples. This is a one-of-a-kind, how-to reference.

WHY RISK-INFORMED ???

Fire safe design responsibility and implementation, which inherently involves risk-minimization and risk-based decision making, involves the interaction of many groups: Architects, facility and process designers, fire protection and safety engineers, loss control and risk managers; review and approval groups including building code officials, fire marshals, regulatory agencies, and insurance companies.  This book describes a fire risk assessment process that can be understood, integrated, and adopted by all the above risk-based decision makers.

Having the "Risk‑Informed" dimension provides a path forward for situations where the application of prescriptive codes may not be feasible or cost-effective, where the application of performance‑based deterministic modeling to meet code equivalency has many uncertainties, or where there is a desire to conduct cost/benefit analysis of numerous fire protection alternatives. 

Typical motivating factors for applying risk-informed methods can involve: 

1. New construction projects where code requirements are hampering the design of innovative process facilities, structures, or new technology operations.

2. The need to develop fire risk reduction alternatives and cost/benefit analysis to comply with recommendations (which may not appear cost effective) made during fire inspection surveys, made by insurance companies, or from regulatory compliance audits.

3. Risk management concerns such as, "what are my biggest fire and explosion risks?" (risk‑informed information); given a fire, how well will the fire protection systems perform?" (performance‑based information); how do I optimize the available fire risk reduction budget?" (cost‑benefit analysis).

4. Third‑party liability potential such as off‑site risk to the public from a large fire or explosion incident.

5. Providing supplemental information for Performance-Based Design submittals.

6. Supplementing plant programs and assessments such as:

• capital improvement planning

• management of change

• fire system impairments or modifications

• risk‑based inspection or maintenance

• risk‑based operator training and emergency response planning

• facility siting risk evaluations

Typical benefits of integrating Risk-Informed, Performance-Based methods include

• Ability to evaluate several different fire risk reduction strategies objectively

• Ability to support cost-effective solutions for complex fire or explosion issues

• Greatly facilitated communication among designers, managers, regulators

• Increased management control over risk reduction strategies and expenditures

• More consistent and objective decisions than those made intuitively and subjectively

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