Fire Safety of Constructions in the Process of Brownfields Cataloging
Abstract: The brownfield revitalization issue is a very actual topic in the area of the sustainable development and construction. One of the most important views – at brownfield revitalization process – is fire safety of constructions (FSC). Mainly in the process of construction permitting and its changes (from the view of Law no. 183/2006 Coll. on Planning and Building Code and its Processing Decree), this view is one of the key field at assessment of project documentation. Brownfield revitalization as building improvement is in the Czech Republic assessed by currently valid Czech Technical Standard (CSN) 73 0834 – “Fire Safety of Constructions – Improvements of Building”. This standard assesses improvements with regard to their impacts to building construction. But revitalization very often includes a change of usage, which the standard takes into consideration too, however, only rarely. Changes of usage are assessed from the view of FSC as new buildings, which means without any relief solvings. The usage of buildings has a fundamental impact on a method, standard coefficient values and limits used through the calculation and evaluation process of fire safety of building construction. In the Czech Republic these methods are separated into two currently valid technical standards – non-production and production buildings (CSN 730802 and CSN 730804). From this point of view it seams to be very proper to integrate extended data into brownfield catalog with more information about not only the technical condition of building itself but the main data needed for the evaluation process of FSC too. These data should consider the fire fighting height, type of fire structural system, the number and kind of escape routes, the kind of firefighting equipment and so on. If this information is included into the entry brownfield data, it is possible to eliminate future complications during the decision phase. These complications might be, for example, unsuitable escape routes, limited usage of building by structural system and some others
