Fire Safety Performance of High-rise buildings in Sri Lanka

Perera, L and Allis, C ORCID: 0000-0001-6040-4179 (2022) Fire Safety Performance of High-rise buildings in Sri Lanka. In: Proceedings of the SLIIT International Conference on Engineering and Technology , 1. pp. 69-78. (The SLIIT International Conference on Engineering and Technology 2022, 09th Feb -11th Feb 2022).

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Abstract

Fire safety is the most critical aspect of high-rise building safety. As human life is essential than other aspects, analysis of a reliable building fire safety performance is more critical than ever. Whenever an actual fire incident occurs, the active firefighting systems in the building would be activated first. As a result, it is necessary to identify the operation of active firefighting systems as well as proper service and maintenance of the systems. The research problem was identified as, people tend to fulfill the minimum fire safety requirements imposed by regulations. Therefore, the condition of fire safety performance in most highrise buildings are very poor. The aim of this research is to identify suggestions to improve the fire safety performance in high-rise buildings in Sri Lanka. Consequently, three objectives have been established to fulfill the research aim. In the first objective, building design features, human behaviors, equipment failures, and underperformance of fire regulations are highlighted as contributing factors to building fire events. The second objective evaluates fire safety precautions implemented in high-rise buildings, such as alarm activation, communication and evacuation procedures, service and maintenance periods of live fire systems, and fire evacuation drills. In the third objective, suggestions to improve the fire safety performance in high-rise buildings are recognized as, maintaining proper coordination between the fire brigade and building fire maintenance department at all times. Since the interpretivism philosophy used in this inductive qualitative research, the data was collected through conducting ten interviews with professionals who are primarily engaged with achieving reliable fire safety performance in high-rise buildings. In conclusion, recommendations such as, establish a coordination center to maintain proper coordination with fire brigade, air force and building maintenance staff and introduce a trained air force squad with helicopters and firefighting equipments can be implemented in Sri Lankan high-rise buildings.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	33 Built Environment and Design; 3301 Architecture; 3302 Building; 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
Subjects:	T Technology > TA Engineering (General). Civil engineering (General) T Technology > TH Building construction
Divisions:	Engineering and Built Environment
Publisher:	Faculty of Engineering, Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology
Date of acceptance:	2 December 2021
Date of first compliant Open Access:	23 September 2026
Date Deposited:	23 Sep 2026 12:39
Last Modified:	23 Sep 2026 12:39
DOI or ID number:	10.54389/onlz8762
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29504

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