Fire protection plans and protection targets
Besides focusing on the fire protection and safety standards laid down in statutory provisions and underwriting guidelines, a comprehensive fire protection plan also considers other, primarily commercial aspects.
This is one way of minimising or even completely avoiding losses due to business interruptions and threatening market losses. Only after consideration of all these aspects is it possible to formulate riskadequate fire protection requirements — in conjunction with defined protection targets (protection of persons, environment, or property) — with a view to achieving an acceptable residual risk.
This calls for comparative loss analyses using relevant fire scenarios and a consideration of maximum losses (e.g. PMLs).
Property values are protected in particular by a fire protection plan, which usually includes structural fire protection measures. It must be noted, however, that structural barriers are the last link in the chain of measures taken to prevent fires from starting and spreading.
By the time they have any effect, major losses may already have occurred (e.g. within a fire compartment) involving bodily injury, environmental impairment, property damage, and business interruptions. In order to reduce the fire risk as far as possible, therefore, a protection plan must go into action much earlier.
Sprinkler systems — Protection for property and human life
It must take effect as early as possible by preventing fires from starting and promoting successful fire-fighting, as Fig.: Fire-Fighting shows. This is because once a fire is in full flame, it can easily get completely out of control. A reliable means of fighting fires in the early stages is a fire suppression system such as a sprinkler system.
According to the Association of German Property Insurers' statistics for Germany, sprinklers and deluge systems had a success rate of 97.9% in the period 1971-1992 (when approx. 9% of the country's industrial floor area was protected by sprinklers). A further analysis shows that only one sprinkler head was activated in 43% of all events and that ten sprinklers at most were sufficient in 89% of the cases.
Evidence of sprinkler systems' effectiveness is also provided by an analysis of 70 electrical industry risks covering a total area of 3.7 million square metres (with approx. 300,000 sprinklers). The analysis included all losses exceeding €12,500 with 80% sprinkler protection. Over a 10-year period, there were 39 losses involving sprinklerprotected risks with a total loss amount of €2.5m (€0.85 per square metre) and 41 losses involving non-protected risks with a total loss amount of €23m (€30.65 per square metre). In terms of the overall loss amount, this corresponds to a ratio of 1:36.
Protection of persons: Probability of a fire reduceed
These examples show that sprinkler systems are a good means of preventing and limiting property damage. But what about protection of persons? The following example shows that if the probability of a fire starting is reduced, it will lead to the probability of subsequent death being reduced too.
The probability of fire in Germany is approx. 2.5 x 10-3 (200,000 fires per year with a population of 80 million). These account for 600 people killed, 6,000 severely injured, and 60,000 suffering minor injuries. In relation to the total population of 80 million, the number of fatalities is equivalent to a probability of 7.5 x 10-6.
According to DIN 18230, the probability of hazardous fires are in place. Fig.: Fire victims 1970-2000 (Canada) also shows the effectiveness of fire suppression systems in protecting people. In Canada, for instance, the number of fatalities declined rapidly when, at the beginning of the 1970s, sprinklers were made obligatory in hotels, hospitals, and nursing homes, and again from the 1990s when they were also prescribed for new residential buildings.
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