Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Economic justification for expenditure on fire protection measures depends upon the expected annual monetary damage due to fire. As a crude index we could express the risk as loss per square foot of floor area or as loss per hundred pounds of value at risk. With the data available these loss indexes for manufacturing industries have been calculated and presented in this note. The values obtained in this paper indicate, in a broad sense, the relative risks in the different industrial groups considered. If they are to be of practical value the indexes require refinement in the light of further information which may become available. It is recognised that indexes are needed for each sub sector or field of activity within an industry. The object of this paper is to stimulate discussion on the economic level for fire protection of various industries taken as a whole rather than to deal with specific risks.