Identification of fire safety issues and challenges in residential high-rise buildings in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Buildings are a fundamental part of human existence and contribute to general social and economic advancement. However, it is difficult to control and rescue lives when fires occur, and there is no time to gather assets. Over the world, building height has dramatically increased to meet the current demands, particularly in urban areas. The study's main worry is the difficulty of controlling a fire and evacuating a building because of the large number of floors and the absence of security and safety measures that must be provided in high structures, making firefighting and control difficult. The importance of applying firefighting methods in cities with high population density and large urban activity, identifying the concept of fire, its causes, classifications, and extinguishing theories, and determining the duties and responsibilities of the architect towards the fire in high-rise buildings were the driving forces behind this research. This study applied a quantitative method through a questionnaire survey approach with the selected respondents of the residential high-rise. This approach is one of the methods of the descriptive-analytic method, which is a procedural and analytical method for studying the phenomenon through in-depth analysis to capture a specific case and study it comprehensively and reach the results. The finding highlighted the critical issues of fire safety in residential high-rise buildings. The survey from 49 respondents indicated that the more people are aware of the causes of fire, the more people will take fire safety precautions. Keywords: fire safety- residential high-rise - fire hazard - high-rise building - human behavior