Fire Safety: Stage‐Dependent Fire Behavior, Performance Criteria, and Application‐Based Requirement

Fire development is inherently stage‐dependent, with material responses and engineering concerns varying across fire scenarios and exposure conditions. Established fire safety engineering (FSE) and performance‐based design (PBD) approaches already connect fire development, test evidence, and mitigation strategies with defined safety objectives. Building on this foundation, this review examines the relationships among material fire behavior, testing methods, and application‐specific safety requirements across buildings, transportation, industrial processes, and energy storage systems. A stage‐dependent organization is used to examine how material properties and test results inform ignition control, fire growth suppression, smoke management, and structural stability. The discussion distinguishes burning‐behavior classifications, ignition parameters, heat and smoke release measurements, and fire‐resistance assessments based on their purposes and applicable conditions. Particular attention is given to how exposure, ventilation, geometry, scale, and system interactions influence the transfer of laboratory findings to engineering applications. The discussion also considers when additional component‐level or system‐level evidence is needed to assess safety outcomes. By considering these relationships across application sectors, this review aims to support the interpretation of materials research within established FSE and PBD practice, while clarifying the applicability and limitations of material‐level evidence in scenario‐specific fire safety assessments.