1.0 Introduction
Nowadays, high rise building has become the icon of the city. Many tall building are constructed to fulfill the increasing demand of commercial and residential development. Millions of people stay and work in high-rise building due to population and economic has been increased. Fire safety has been concern to protect their life and property. To ensure the safety of the buildings and their users, the safety system and equipment should parallel with the standard of requirements and has a good implementation of safety management. Although high-rise buildings are provided with the most sophisticated safety features, assurance of safety to building users is still questionable. Therefore, fire safe shelter has been introduced to provide better fire safety design in high-rise building. This study has been developed with the aim to review the importance of fire safe shelter design in high-rise building and to overview the current fire safety design on high-rise building, and giving recommendation to improve the practice. The methodology is conducted the study included literature review, analysis of results and data collection. The process of data collection is collected toward the primary data by conducting questionnaire surveys to the respondents at the selected buildings case studies and from the author’s observation. From the study, it was found that how the fire safety shelter integrates in fire safety design to protect the civilian in the buildings.
2.0 Issue Statement:
In recent years, fire attack in high rise building has become the common issue which cause many civilian deaths and injured. Civilians are staying in high rise building unable to escape because they are too high from the ground. The fear of the civilian also caused the problem which makes them unable to escape. Although fire emergency exit are provided, it is too slow for civilian stayed in high top of the building to escape. The chance of them to escape is low. Another problem is difficult for fire fighters to reach the upper floors. For example, the highest fire truck ladder can be reached in many cities only can extends to the eight floors. In order to extinguish fire above that point, fire fighters must climb up many of stairs which carry along fire hoses and other heavy equipment.
High-rise buildings are designed to be safe. When come to many civilian stay at tall building, emergency response is become more difficult to evacuate civilians out of the building. What height is considered high-rise? A high-rise is defined as any building above 15 m or four floors in height or whichever is more. All high-rises are required to provide fire protection arrangements prescribed by the National Building Code (NBC) and the National Electricity Code (NEC). These include a fire escape, fire pump and storage tank at the ground level, lift, lightning protection device, fire alarm, extinguishers, etc.
There are many cases related to fire incident. For example, the incident happen on Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City completely collapsed just over one hour after fires raged in them upon the crash of two airplanes into them on 11 September 2001. This total incident caused 2795 dead. The causes of buildings collapse was the severe weakening of the load-bearing strength of the towers' steel-based load-bearing structure under extreme heat. Besides, the high-rise apartment fire in Shanghai on15 November 2010 has become attention for people around the world. This incident has taken 53 people and injured 70 casualties. This incident happen cause by the spark during welding work. Moreover, there is another fire incident happen in Busan on October 2010. Based on the report, there are no casualties were reported as most residents were dispersed after the fire broke out. Fire fighters rescued 31 residents, four of casualties were sent to the hospital for treatment. Based on the investigation, people suspect the cause happen from the fire started at the garbage room on the fourth floor which is highly flammable wall material and strong winds apparently fuelled the fire. Based on incidents have been highlighted, the fire safety design needs to be considered more critically for all the high rise building.
3.0 Research Question:
1) What is the shelter design requirement for high rise building?
2) The awareness of occupants about fire safe shelter.
4.0 Aim:
The aim of this research is to access the need for fire safety means in high rise buildings.
5.0 Objective:
1) To discover how best to improve fire safety by using fire safe shelter.
2) To propose solution on how to integrate the fire safety design in high rise building.
6.0 Scope:
This research will discuss the design of shelters to protect against fire attack. The design of such shelters requires attention to problems such as the number of occupants staying or working in such building and also the high of the building will affected the design of shelter. The introducing of this fire safety system can lead to better protection in order to reduce risk of danger from occupants. Besides, the counter measures for high rise building fire also need to be considered to deal with large risk as follow,
1. Protection against fire and smoke
2. Evacuation
3. Fire-fighting
4. Protection against collapse
7.0 Proposed Methodology
In order to achieve the objectives have been stated, the research will be carried out in step by steps. First of all, identify the objectives and scope needed for this research. Secondly follow by conducting literature review about issue on fire incident happen in high rise building and the function of fire safety shelter currently using on high-rise building. This process will help in better understanding on the research topic and integrate the knowledge to the proposed subject. Besides, professional interviews with the architect and engineer also will be conducted related to the fire safety shelter in safety design. Question checklist will be provided in detail to prevent any missing question during interview. Moreover, questionnaire survey also will be conducted towards the respondents staying in high-rise building. The result will be collected and proceed to compile the result and conduct analysis. Final will be provided a presentation based on the analyzed data and also the final report include the conclusion and recommendation.
