Economic cost of fire: exploring UK fire incident data to develop a design tool

Statistical analysis of previous fire incidents in the UK has been carried out with the intent of providing an evidence base in the creation of a decision support system tool for UK fire engineering consultants to aid in the design of cost effective fire engineered structures. Analysis of the fire incident data has shown that the data collected until 2008 in the UK is very binary in nature and this has made it difficult to create an accurately predicting damage model. Even though statistical modelling of the data proved to be inaccurate, cost comparisons of other data sets (loss adjustors costs and UK building costs) was carried out and discussed, allowing the cost of fires to be calculated using over time should the data provided by the new Fire and Rescue Service data collection methods allow for collection of data in a non binary form.