Developing Key Fire Safety Indicators for Retail Buildings – Using a Multi Attribute Decision Making Method with a Hierarchical Approach

Sammanfattning: In order to develop indicators measuring the most important aspects of fire safety, the initial approach undertaken was to identify the fire safety components that have the largest importance to a building’s overall fire safety, and to let these components form the basis for the indicator development. Through the use of a Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) methodology with a hierarchical approach, the most important components in relation to a building’s overall fire safety were identified. The indicators were developed using a reasoning approach due to the lack of established documented strategies for indicator development. The most important features of each component were identified through a literature review, and were considered to be suitable features to form the basis for meaningful indicators within the area of fire safety. Based on the three components of sprinkler system, detection system, and personnel, a total of seven indicators were developed. The developed fire safety systems indicators were: sprinkler activations per building area, summarised grade for sprinkler system features, detector activations per building area, and summarised grade for detection system features. The personnel component rendered three components: number of personnel per building area, personnel per customer, and weighted number of fire safety training sessions.