Past  Conferences

	A Conference on Architectural Surety
	Assuring the Performance of Buildings and Infrastructures
	PROCEEDINGS

Anticipating Fire: A Sociotechnical Approach to Mitigation

Louise Comfort

University of Pittsburgh

ABSTRACT

Fire is a complex, dynamic phenomenon in which small differences in initial conditions lead to large differences in outcome. Designing structures to reduce risk of fire in the first place, and to facilitate rapid intervention should it occur, are critical elements in a risk mitigation strategy. I propose a sociotechnical approach that will integrate critical information about buildings, people, and environmental hazards to reduce the risk of fire in engineered buildings and communities.

A sociotechnical strategy combines technical with organizational systems to increase the capacity of a community to reduce risk and loss. Such a strategy assumes that an engineered building, with its occupants, constitutes a sociotechnical system, and that many buildings, with their occupants, create a wider community that can anticipate, reduce, or increase risk. The systems are nonlinear, and require dynamic information processes for effective mitigation.

I reviewed conditions that led to rapid fire spread in two cases: the intense fires that erupted in Kobe, Japan following the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of January 17, 1995, and the firestorm that engulfed the Oakland/Berkeley Hills in northern California on October 20, 1991. I conclude that the design of sociotechnical systems presents the potential for mitigating risk of fire in interdependent communities.

1997 Conference Home Page

1997 Conference Contents