Performance-Based Fire Engineering: Sensitivity Analysis on Design Parameters

Abstract

Performance based fire engineering has recently been the focus of several studies due to its well-known benefits and the short-comings of the traditional prescriptive design methods. However, the method is not often used extensively because of the large number of parameters and decisions involved in the process. This study presents a framework to conduct a number of sensitivity analyses to help the engineer determine which of several parameters used in a performance based design can affect the outcome significantly. A special computational tool is developed to efficiently build several models and conduct analyses by varying different parameters. A simple residential building is used as a case study to show the capability of the tool in conducting sensitivity analysis and identifying key parameters.