Arlington Heights, Illinois, USA, 25 September 2018: Once built or installed, there exists little real-world knowledge on how fire safety technology performs, said Scott Arnold, Manager of Industry Content, Air Movement and Control Association International Inc., (AMCA), while elaborating on the challenges to understanding fire-safety and its trade-offs.

Scott Arnold

A recent AMCA White Paper, titled ‘The impact of Fire-Sprinkler Trade-offs on Occupant and Building Safety’, describes that an over-reliance on automatic fire-sprinklers at the expense of passive fire-safety features such as fire dampers and smoke dampers are thought to be a cause of the measurable decrease in building fire-safety scores.

Arnold said, that when it comes to fire-sprinkler trade-offs, the cost has a major role to play. “When compared to performance, fire sprinkler trade-offs have much more to do with cost savings, as they prove to be more cost-effective as compared to high-end fire protection systems,” he said. The ideal method to approach fire safety, he added, should involve both active and passive fire protection systems, which involve the detection, suppression and containment of fire within a building.