Abstract

Aim: The aim of the article is an attempt to answer the questions: How did fire safety engineering start in the world? Can we already talk in Poland about fire engineering design as an official approach and field of science? What are the procedures for designing performance-based fire protection and how they differ from the traditional prescriptive-based? Who should have permission to execute performance-based designs and what tools are most appropriate for it?

Introduction: In the recent years growing problem of insufficient qualifications among those involved in fire safety engineering was noted around the world . Only a few countries (such as USA, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Italy) have teaching courses in higher education. The development of this science is very dynamic and new guidelines and regulations on the use of tools of fire engineering constantly arise. In Poland for almost 14 years fire ventilation projects, based on performance-based methods are executed and slowly this method extends to other security systems. For several years, a modern two-stage code is waiting for implementation. When designing computer simulations CFD are commonly used and are treated as a unique engineering tool. Lack of sufficient knowledge of persons performing simulation and verification of the results by performing independent calculations by other methods, make the quality of the analyzes and projects based on them often unsatisfactory. In the nearest future a guidebook to perform CFD simulations is to be issued , which will hopefully improve the situation. Education in the field of fire safety engineering is still improving.

Methodology: The article was developed based on literature of the subject and the author’s own experience, supported by many years of performance-based fire protection analysis in Poland, participation in numerous international conferences and conducted tests and studies. Summary: Evaluation

Conclusions: Evaluation of data presented in the article about the current level of development of fire safety engineering allows to say that knowledge in this field in Poland is at a stage similar to other European countries, and still improving, thus we have a chance to catch up with the world leaders.

Keywords: fire safety engineering, performance-based methods, CFD, fire protection, computer simulations

Type of article: review article