Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

This paper addresses the problem of societal fire risk perception by using the Taiwanese fire statistics, description of fire risk in Asia/Oceania countries, and comparison with levels of fire risk in Australia, Japan, the UK and USA. It is demonstrated that the fire statistics in Taiwan indicates a progress in fire safety provisions, underlying the importance of fire service reorganization since 1995. Some countermeasures, including such as “Community Woman Fire Safety Advisors” and “Fire Safety Feng Shui Masters”, proposed by a new central and local fire authorities contributed significantly to the progress. Performed analysis of fire statistics through countries of Asia/Oceania region illustrates that each country has its own problems, which likely depend on climate, natural and built environment, and economy. Through comparison with fire risk problems in leading world countries, paper identifies and explores some important issues of fire safety in Taiwan, e.g. the need to develop in Taiwan a unified fire incident/accident data base system involving local fire brigades.