Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This note summarises some of the more important methods that have been proposed in the literature for assessing the safety of a structure on a quantitative basis and for determining what constitutes an acceptable risk. These methods have hitherto been applied in branches of engineering such as design of aircraft and dams and design of buildings against wind loads, live loads, earthquakes etc: the object of the note is to discuss the relevance of these methods in the design of fire protection.