A sensitivity matrix method to understand the building fire egress performance gap

A building performance gap may exist in each building area. While performance monitoring tools are available and widely applied in energy efficiency and structural health, there are currently no available performance monitoring tools in the area of fire safety. Although a fire accident is an acute phenomenon that is rare and unpredictable and makes observing a building's fire performance very difficult, the evolution of underlying factors that determine the building fire performance in a future fire is in fact a chronic phenomenon that is observable and predictable. This article proposes a sensitivity matrix method (SMM) based on Taylor series expansion to better understand the building fire egress performance gap by analyzing changes in chronic influencing factors. Uncertainty of this method is investigated against FDS simulations in an exemplar 3-story apartment building and described by two parameters: the system bias and the relative standard deviation. Combining the available safe egress time (ASET) with the required safe egress time (RSET), the resulting Egress Safety Ratio (ESR) is chosen as the key building fire egress performance indicator in case studies, and a prototype fire performance monitoring tool based on the SMM is developed, indicating its potential of tracking and closing the building fire egress performance gap.