Cadena J., Munoz F., 2013, The Link between Fire Research and Process Safety: An Evolution from Specific Needs to General Concern, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 31, 679-684.
Fire Safety Engineering generates key research that allows improving the knowledge and models of fire dynamics, therefore such research should constitute an input for Performance-based Risk Analysis of fire events. This Risk Analysis process for complex industrial facilities and operations are usually carried out within a Process Safety framework, in which is traditional to rely on the prescriptive approach given by standards such as NFPA. Nevertheless, with fire prescriptive codes integrating Performance-based Design and being this a traditional approach for other events such as explosions, Fire Safety Engineering research becomes a needed input for Process Safety. This link between the two engineering areas already exists but needs more structure and application in order to make it a usual practice for the design of facilities and their fire protection systems. This document seeks to throw light into this link and discuss its importance for the Risk Analysis of fire scenarios in complex industrial facilities, integrating the prescriptive and Performance-based approaches.
