Health care application of quantitative fire risk analysis

Quantitative risk analysis (QRA) is a very powerful tool with which the fire protection engineer systematically can analyze fire safety problems. Risk analysis methods have during the last decades become more common for analyzing fire safety problems. This is partly because of the development of fire simulation tools enabling a quantitative estimation of the consequences. The increased use of risk analysis methods can also be traced back to the development of performance-based regulations and standards [1�“4]. In such regulations and standards the requirement is to verify that the proposed design solution meets the fire safety objectives but they do not necessarily state how this shall be performed. The engineer, therefore, needs some tools by which he or she can structure the relevant problems and transform them to engineering problems that can be solved. Risk analysis is such a structured method.