Fire Protection Performance Evaluation for Historic Buildings

In many respects, historic buildings have long been under-served by the fire safety engineering community and have not received the level of consideration warranted structures of significance and distinction. This can in part be explained by the idiosyncratic nature of these buildings that defy standard code and construction approaches given their archaic configurations and materials. This paper reviews current activity to address these issues including a comprehensive reviewof fire safety codes in the U.S. This reviewidentified many disparate approaches to regulating fire safety in historic buildings. There are different administrative and technical components and different administrative and technical approaches. The 2001 edition of NFPA 914, Code for Fire Protection in Historic Structures, focuses on performance-based evaluation as an important alternative to prescriptive codes. Goals, objectives, and performance criteria are essential elements of the new code. This paper is adapted from a presentation at the Third International Conference on Performance-Based Codes and Fire Safety Design Methods [1].