Linking safety factor and failure probability for fire safety engineering

In response to the call for the development of risk informed, performance-based building fire regulations, a literature review was conducted to link the traditional safety factor approach in fire safety engineering to failure probability. It can be demonstrated that a safety factor alone is an insufficient measure, or is only a first-order measure of risk or failure probability. To achieve a higher order estimate of failure probability, an α-percentile method is proposed. As part of this methodology, it is also proposed that the fire engineering briefing process involve nominations of percentile values for design fire scenarios as well as other parameters that define the scenarios.