Analysis of the Schiphol Cell Complex fire using a Bayesian belief net based model

D.M. Hanea, H.M. Jagtman and B.J.M. Ale

Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 2012, vol. 100, issue C, 115-124

Abstract: In the night of the 26 and 27 October 2005, a fire broke out in the K-Wing of the Schiphol Cell Complex near Amsterdam. Eleven of 43 occupants of this wing died due to smoke inhalation. The Dutch Safety Board analysed the fire and released a report 1 year later. This article presents how a probabilistic model based on Bayesian networks can be used to analyse such a fire. The paper emphasises the usefulness of the model for this analysis. In additional it discusses the applicability for prioritisation of the recommendations such as those posed by the investigation board for the improvements of fire safety in special buildings. The big advantage of the model is that it can be used not only for fire analyses after accidents, but also prior to the accident, for example in the design phase of the building, to estimate the outcome of a possible fire given different possible scenarios. This contribution shows that if such a model was used before the fire occurred the number of fatalities would have not come as a surprise, since the model predicts a larger percentage of people dying than happened in the real fire.

Keywords: Bayesian belief networks; Fire safety; Schiphol Cell Complex (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095183201200004X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:reensy:v:100:y:2012:i:c:p:115-124

DOI: 10.1016/j.ress.2012.01.002

Access Statistics for this article

Reliability Engineering and System Safety is currently edited by Carlos Guedes Soares

More articles in Reliability Engineering and System Safety from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().