Preventive Fire Risk Assessment of Italian Architectural Heritage: An Index Based Approach

Abstract

One of the most challenging problems of the ancient architectural heritage is its protection from fire risk. The “Italian Risk assessment map of the cultural heritage” (Carta del Rischio [1]), is a GIS-based platform developed by the Italian Central Institute for Restoration (ISCR) to assess the exposure and the vulnerability to static-structural, environmental, anthropogenic and seismic risk of the historical and cultural heritage. The paper marks a new phase of development of the Risk Map Information System aiming at integrating the vulnerability estimation of the historical buildings with a new method derived from the Fire Risk Index Method for Multi-storey Apartment Buildings (FRIM-MAB). The new index-based method has been tested in a full scale case-study in comparison with both the Italian prescriptive assessment and the performance-based fire protection approach. Results show the capability of the approach, its reliability and user friendliness.