Optimized fire protection of cultural heritage structures based on the analytic hierarchy process

- The paper deals with the fire protection problem of historic structures.
- An AHP based model is proposed able to assess a structure's fire safety level.
- A generic selection and resource allocation model is applied to optimise solutions.
- The model's effectiveness is presented for the case of Simonopetra monastery.

Fire safety constitutes a significant part of engineering design practice that frequently lead designers to face critical decision-making type of questions. Especially in the case of fire protection of cultural heritage structures, the challenges that engineers confront are sometimes very difficult to deal with. Conventional prescriptive-based fire protection codes cannot be implemented for the protection of such structural systems; on the other hand, performance-based design (PBD) procedures can provide reliable solutions for this type of structures. Fire safety upgrading of historic structures can be expressed as multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) problems. In this context, we propose a model based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) that is able to assess the overall fire safety level of a structure in terms of the fire protection measures implemented. Moreover, a generic selection and resource allocation (S&RA) model is applied that in conjunction with the proposed AHP model leads to optimized solutions. In this study, the implementation of the proposed optimized fire protection upgrade framework along with its advantages is presented for the case of the Mount Athos monastery of Simonos Petra and results are discussed.