Fire safety gaps in super high-rise buildings in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Increasing population and building density in cities, have left numerous risks in vertical developments. As a result of the competing requirements, limitations in fire safety could be observed among many super high-rise buildings. To overcome these situations, existing fire safety regulations have been revised. They are established by the legislation to be opportune so that designers and developers are adequately aware of what to apply and not to apply. However in Sri Lanka, by the time most of the super high-rises initiated, local fire regulations did not have any provision to serve that type of buildings. Hence, the regulations that needs to be implemented to ensure life and property safety of occupants from fire damages are still not in proper practice. This study reviewed the extent of safety in local fire safety regulations and the current fire safety practice in super high-rise buildings. The results indicate limitations in local fire safety regulations with respect to international fire safety code and gaps in current fire safety practices in super high-rise buildings. Local fire safety could fully cover only 7.14% of the international code. Remaining 92.86% needs improvements to address current fire safety requirement. In the existing context, all the case studies fully cover more than 60% of local code. Yet, 11%-16% were not covered by all three of them. Hence the study could identify design and operational level gaps in case studies. Findings of the research provided an insight to potential causes that generate these gaps in fire safety. 50% of the 16 proposed potential causes were recognized in every case study. Direct regulation driven causes comprised 62.5% of them. These findings could impact increasing the level of fire safety offered in local fire regulation, subsequently super-high rise buildings in local context. In-depth study of international fire safety code will help taking the local fire safety code to the next level. Encouraging researchers and increasing research opportunities on the subject locally, could contribute to society and its inhabitants by applying and sharing knowledge with.