Despite the existence of norms, laws and executive orders that provide safety in residential
buildings, fires continue to occur in Brazil and worldwide and can be fatal given their severity
and provided occupants do not know what to do. This problem becomes even more complex in
high buildings (height greater than 30 meters), where fire protection systems are employed, but
still there is no – in Brazil – mandatory fire training for occupants. Authors focused on the study
of human behavior in fire situations have already stated that the adequacy of responses (or
behavior) is the key for the building to be safely abandoned in case of need and to ensure greater
safety to the building occupants. In view of the above, this work, through Design Science
Research (DSR), aimed to develop a fire training method for occupants of tall residential
buildings. The method had two aspects of composition: i) theoretical analysis (where norms,
laws, executive orders, good practices and fires already occurred were used as sources of
information) and ii) computational simulation (where the hypotheses were tested). As products,
a flowchart and a listing of the contents to be used in the training were developed. Then, the
method was validated, analyzing the internal validity, external validity, content validity and
construct validity. To this end, specialist professionals from the Fire Department, in 12
Brazilian states, answered 42 questionnaires attesting to the validity of the method and
considering it appropriate, understandable, objective, replicable and appropriate for the
objective to which it was available. In addition to confirming the negative impact of premovement time, it was also possible to verify that the number of occupants in the building, as
well as the distances covered by these are extremely important factors in the abandonment
process and should be verified in new projects aimed at improving their safety. In addition,
three buildings were used for the development of the study and had the training method applied,
finally being evaluated by the occupants themselves and training participants, who considered
it acceptable and responsible for providing them with more safety.
|
