Fire safety regulations for housing in Europe compared

Fire safety regulations for housing in Europe compared

Visscher, H.J.
Meijer, F.M.
Sheridan, L.

OTB Research Institute

2009-10-15

There is still broad variety of systems of technical requirements for buildings in the various European countries, despite the existence of the Construction Products Directive of the European Union and the development of Euro Codes. The goals and topics are quite similar, but detailed study reveals considerable variety of functional requirements, performance requirements, and specifications, with inconsistency within the requirements of some countries.This article is based on the findings of comparative analysis of building regulations for housing in eight European countries, commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Housing and intended to locate the Dutch Building Decree within the spectrum of regulations in other European countries. The project compares the systems of building control, the formulation of regulations, and the content of requirements for selected subjects and only for the domain of housing. Earlier (Visscher e. a. 2005) an article about the differences in the systems of formulation of regulations was published. This article focusses on the analysis of fire safety, which identifies several differences in both levels of requirements and strategies that may be significant in practice. It illustrates many impediments to harmonisation of the description of fire safety strategies.

building regulations
fire safety requirements
performance requirements
Europe

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:ccee7405-6502-48f0-9491-52c5d2f7c652

1335-8863

Building research journal 56(4), 215-226. (2008)

Institutional Repository

journal article

(c) 2009 Visscher, H.J.; Meijer, F.M.; Sheridan, L.