ABSTRACT
To verify compliance with life and fire safety to people typically heuristic approaches are used. Using these approaches, it is hardly possible to verify the quantitative impact of Fire Protection Systems (FPS), such as fire alarm or automatic extinguishing systems for the performance of the life safety goals. In other words, it remains uncertain how much fire protection systems assist to fulfill the life safety goals. To answer this questions for life safety, taking into account the controls, the failure probabilities and operation of fire protection systems, the aspects of fire dynamics, as well as the aspects of egress quality and evacuation time are to be considered. This is only possible in the context of a holistic and integrated approach to fire safety (Nachitigall & Klingsch 2011). The presented probabilistic model based on the individual risk describes a possibility to check and to improve the fire safety by implementing the results of the fire safety assessment within the scope of the model.
