Digitized fuel load survey in commercial and university office buildings for fire safety assessment

Abstract

Fuel load significantly affects fire development in compartments, and its design value derives from the statistical results of numerous surveys. This work enhances the fuel load database by employing a digitized survey method to assess 27 university and commercial offices in Hong Kong and Mainland, China. The results revealed significant differences in fuel load densities: university offices averaged 382 MJ/m² (SD: 297 MJ/m²) and commercial offices averaged 1804 MJ/m² (SD: 1319 MJ/m²). Moreover, it proposed an online questionnaire method to overcome onsite access limitations. Furthermore, it identified higher fuel load densities in commercial offices due to higher paper-made content and greater occupancy density than university offices. The fuel load of university offices was lower than that in previous surveys and design codes, while commercial fuel load was higher. Notably, there is an increasing tendency of fuel load density and plastic combustible composition over the years. Additionally, it considers that Gompertz distribution better fits cumulative probabilities of fuel load density data with a small sample size. Overall, it provides a valuable database for future fire scenario design, fire codes edition, and fire safety assessment and discusses future collaboration with AI applications.