Approaches to Residential Fire Safety – A Systematic Literature Review

Home fires can cause fatalities, severe injuries, and damage to the household assets. Statistics indicate that the current fire safety measures are not effective for all types of dwellers. In many countries, majority of fire fatalities occurs mostly among vulnerable groups. The main objective of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review in the field of residential fire safety and to evaluate fire safety measures in two perspectives. First, it is investigated which dimensions of fire safety are addressed, such as individual needs, the technical and physical environment, as well as the social and organizational environment. Second, it is investigated whether the studies focused more toward preventing the causes, and/or the consequences. Out of the initial 1303 studies from three search engines, 437 studies were selected for further assessment. The results show that the amount of published research in residential fire safety is generally increasing during the last decades. In recent years only, research has addressed all the three dimensions: individual needs, the technical and physical environment, as well as the social and organizational environment. Considering the total number of articles focusing on preventing the causes and/or consequences, the existing literature seems to be leaning toward measures reducing the consequence of the fire. The studies that aimed to address both causes and consequences, are likely to address more than one of the three dimensions. While research on individual measures and technologies are highly valuable, research that focuses on the interplay of individual needs, the technical and physical environment, as well as the social and organizational environment in residential fire safety can lead to new insights and better prioritization of measures. This can especially be useful in terms of prioritizing and aiding the implementation of measures, thus providing policymakers, governments, and authorities information that can contribute to achieving higher fire safety levels in homes. The need to include the "soft" dimensions of fire prevention is further emphasized by the fact that the majority of residential fires harm specific vulnerable groups. This understanding can be crucial to develop new solutions and measures to find and target the most important ones that can be connected to fire causes and hazardous events, and it can only be achievable through multidisciplinary cooperation with different groups of expertise including health care, social science and humanities, technical fire safety, relevant authorities, stakeholders, as well as representatives for the risk groups and the vulnerable communities.

Keywords: Residential fire safety, Home fire, dwellings, Systematic literature review, Fire safety measures, Dimensions, Barriers, Influencing factors.

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