Three New Journal Articles Provide Pathways Toward Sustainable and Fire Resilient Buildings
Sustainability and fire resilience are often treated as separate priorities, yet both are essential to creating sustainable, fire resilient buildings and communities that can thrive over the long term. Through the Decision Support Frameworks for a Sustainable and Fire Resilient Built Environment (SAFR-BE) project, led by researchers at Lund University in Sweden, with support from UL Research Institutes’ Fire Safety Research Institute, three journal articles have been published examining the intersection of these two important objectives.
Together, these peer-reviewed journal articles advance this work from concept to application. By developing a comprehensive understanding of how these priorities influence each other, the papers support evidence-based frameworks and approaches that balance environmental goals with fire safety performance.
Establishing a Foundation for Sustainable and Fire Resilient Buildings
The Conceptual Basis for a Sustainable and Fire Resilient Built Environment article, published in Fire Technology, establishes a conceptual foundation for considering sustainability and fire resilience together. The researchers uncovered that technological choices intended to improve building sustainability, such as using different materials to reduce the carbon footprint or increasing the use of renewable energy systems, can have implications for fire resilience when those decisions are not considered holistically. In this way, sustainability-driven choices can introduce or change fire hazards, and those interactions need to be considered as part of the whole building system.
Building on this research, the Decision Support Framework for Sustainable and Fire Resilient Buildings (SAFR-B), also published in Fire Technology, moves toward a practical approach to evaluating sustainability and fire resilience. The researchers used risk indexing and the analytical hierarchy process to compare design considerations. Through a Delphi process, they informed the initial scoring and weighting of attributes and strategies, which were then used to develop the SAFR-B framework.
Finally, the Methodology for the integration of fire risk in building life cycle analysis, published in the Fire Safety Journal, presents a methodology for incorporating fire risk into building life cycle analysis. Researchers explored how the climate impact of fire risk can be factored into assessments of a building's overall climate impact by integrating fire risk into life cycle analysis calculations and measuring its impact in CO₂-equivalents. They also examined how fire protection measures, including sprinkler systems, can reduce that climate impact. Further on, the authors applied the methodology to multiple building types, including single-family homes, apartment buildings, schools, offices, commercial buildings, and preschools.
Recommendations for Creating Sustainable and Fire Resilient Buildings
Together, the papers point to three primary ways to better align sustainability and fire resilience:
- Consider both priorities together from the beginning. Decisions intended to advance sustainability can interact with fire resilience, making it important to understand both objectives within a larger system.
- Use structured approaches to evaluate competing or interacting priorities. The SAFR-B decision framework provides an initial method for evaluating sustainability and fire resilience within the same decision-making process.
- Account for fire when assessing the environmental performance of buildings. Incorporating fire risk into life cycle analysis can provide a more comprehensive picture of a building's climate impact.
Connecting the Research to SAFR-BE
Collectively, these papers advance the SAFR-BE vision of evaluating sustainability and fire resilience as interconnected objectives. Building sustainable, fire resilient buildings and communities requires considering the full lifecycle of structures, materials, and communities. At the same time, communities must remain resilient to fire hazards that can threaten lives, property, and long-term community goals. The SAFR-BE project addresses these interconnected challenges by bringing together researchers and industry experts to evaluate how sustainability initiatives and fire resilience strategies can complement each other. These findings can help stakeholders globally make more informed decisions about the built environment, aligned with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
To learn more about this research, read the journal articles.
About Fire Safety Journal
Fire Safety Journal is the leading publication dealing with all aspects of fire safety engineering. Its scope is purposefully wide, as it is deemed important to encourage papers from all sources within this multidisciplinary subject, thus providing a forum for its further development as a distinct engineering discipline. This is an essential step towards gaining a status equal to that enjoyed by the other engineering disciplines.
About Fire Technology
Fire Technology is a scientific journal that publishes original contributions, both theoretical and empirical, that contribute to the solution of problems in fire safety science and engineering. It is the leading journal in the field, publishing applied research dealing with the full range of actual and potential fire hazards facing humans and the environment. It covers the entire domain of fire safety science and engineering problems relevant in industrial, operational, cultural, and environmental applications, including modeling, testing, detection, suppression, human behavior, wildfires, structures, and risk analysis.
