International Journal on Architectural Science, Volume 7, Number 2, p.57-60, 2006 57 FIRE SAFETY PROVISIONS FOR SUPERTALL BUILDINGS W.K. Chow Research Centre for Fire Engineering, Department of Building Services Engineering Area of Strength: Fire Safety Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China (Received 22 August 2007; Accepted 9 October 2007) ABSTRACT Fire safety provisions required in supertall buildings will be outlined in this paper. Both passive and active systems specified in the codes for normal tall buildings are briefly listed. Evacuation is a concern. The total fire safety concept of implementing software fire safety management to control hardware provisions in passive building construction and active fire protection system is recommended for existing supertall buildings in dense urban areas. A fire safety management scheme should be worked out with clear understanding on the fire dynamics in supertall buildings. 1. INTRODUCTION With the rapid increase in economics and population in the Far East and the increasing number of non-accidental fires, fire ‘safety’ in dense urban areas (especially the development of big cities in China) has to be considered carefully. Big accidental fires had happened before in highrise buildings, cross-harbour tunnel and in buses in Hong Kong; and in many old highrise buildings and new shopping malls in China. Non- accidental fires reported over the world included arson fires in a bank, karaoke, elderly houses and an underground railway in Hong Kong; terrorist fires in the World Trade Centre on 11 September, 2001 (WTC-911) in USA; arson fires in universities in Beijing; and underground railway arson fires in South Korea and Russia. New architectural features such as deep plan, highrise, framed structure and well-sealed buildings; the use of new materials; new style of living; and so many people living in cities or ‘city groups’ would give new fire safety problems of concern [1]. Several big fires were reported [2-5] in tunnel, market, shopping mall and factory in the first half of 2007 in Hong Kong. There are many highrise buildings in the Far East. Over half of the top 100 highrise residential buildings in the world are found in Hong Kong. Some of them are of height over 200 m [6]. Those buildings of more than 40 levels (about 120 m) are understood as supertall (or ultra highrise) buildings in Hong Kong. Supertall buildings are those of height over 100 m in China [7]. Now, buildings taller than 250 m should go through performance- based design [8]. Different heights are adopted such as 150 m adopted (known as super high-rise) in Ireland [9] and 350 m in Canada [10]. A very big fire happened [e.g. 11] in an old highrise building of height only about 50 m during the replacement of the lift on 20 November, 1996. A fire occurred recently [12] in the 492 m Shanghai World Financial Center, 101-level in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, China. It took over one hour to control the fire. Therefore, there are concerns on fire safety in those supertall buildings. In addition, there are possibilities [e.g. 13] to be potential targets of terrorist attack as the WTC. Even under accidental fires, tall buildings would give long evacuation time [14,15] to a ‘safe place’. Further, structural stability [16] of the tall buildings under fire and effect to adjacent highrise buildings upon collapse are the concerns. Both passive building constructions PBC and active protection systems or fire services installations FSI must be reconsidered. Existing prescriptive codes [e.g. 17-20] are only demonstrated to be workable only for buildings of normal height, say up to 40 stories for ‘normal use’. Consequences of erecting very tall buildings (regarded as ‘tallness’ in the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat CTBUH 1995) [16] are not yet studied indepth and so not included in the codes. In implementing performance-based design (PBD) [21] through engineering performance-based fire codes (EPBFC) which is known as the fire engineering approach (FEA) [1] in Hong Kong, the fire safety objectives, methods for fire hazard assessment and risk analysis database are not yet agreed by the professionals. Therefore, PBD was based on the fire safety provisions listed in the prescriptive codes [e.g. 22].