Impact of Technical, Human, and Organizational Risks on Reliability of Fire Safety Systems in High-Rise Residential Buildings--Applications of an Integrated Probabilistic Risk Assessment Model  
[PERSON]  
Centre for Environmental Safety and Risk Engineering, Victoria University, Melbourne, Victoria 3030, Australia; [PERSON]  
additional capacity for society to invest to reduce unnecessary loss of life. Gross domestic product (GDP) and life expectancy are typical variables used to indicate the health of a society where resources allotted for safety purposes get translated into an increasingly healthier life. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [8] propose a framework for the fire safety goal life safety, which links a quantified risk criterion for life safety with a series of well-defined fire safety criteria for the operative requirements for ignition of fire, fire development, evacuation, and strength of structures. These fire safety criteria can be related to generally applied fire safety solutions. To implement PRA in buildings, [PERSON] et al. [9] provide a systematic approach through a case study of a six-storey commercial building based on comparative expected risk-to-life (ERL) methodology. [PERSON] et al. [10] developed an integrated quantitative risk assessment framework based on response surface modelling. There have been various other comprehensive risk models which were listed in [11; 12]. All are focused on the quantification of technical risk factors without considering human factors. [PERSON] et al. [13] proposed a framework for prioritization of safety risk where rankings of risks are based on societal risk and weightings. They suggest the introduction of human factors into the analysis, with systematic follow-up. Human and organizational factors (HOFs) are important variables in assessing fire risk and the literature suggests that human and organizational errors (HOEs) should be considered in PRA and are likely relevant to high-rise residential buildings [14]. [PERSON] and [PERSON] [14] define HOEs as \"the collective departures from acceptable or desirable practice by an individual or groups of individuals that may result in unacceptable or undesirable outcomes.\" In other high-risk sectors, personnel conditions in terms of training, and safety culture are usually implemented in PRA to ensure an adequate level of safety. HOEs related to fire safety in high-rise buildings include risk factors such as lack of regular drills or not following safety procedures, and poor safety culture. [PERSON] et al. [15] assert that given the impact of executing regular fire drills on timely fire response, it becomes important to accurately estimate the value of probability towards performing or not performing fire drills. As much as 80% of accidents are caused by human and organizational errors [14; 16] and our recent study of high-rise buildings found that in general, fire safety designs that do not consider HOEs underestimate overall risk by approximately 20% [17]. Fire safety protection in high-rise buildings consists of both active and passive systems that can be affected by HOEs. Automatic fire suppression and detection systems such as sprinklers, alarms, detectors, and smoke control systems are considered active systems while passive systems are designed to slow the spread or contain fires [18]. Reliability of passive systems is generally considered to be higher than active systems while active systems, such as sprinklers are considered highly efficient [19]. This perception of a difference in reliability may be related to a requirement that active systems require either automatic or manual intervention to initiate activation in a fire event [20]. In [19] the highest percentage of incidents of failure of sprinklers to activate was that the water supply was disabled or inadequate. Other causes were insufficient maintenance, damaged components, and antiquated systems or components.