The need to identify challenges for the fire safety evacuation in high-rise buildings in India

Abstract

High-rise buildings have become a vision of the future as cities grow vertically in developing nations like India. High-rises are a practical by-product of modern times and are defined as structures built higher than 75 feet or 7 to 10 stories in India. In the last ten years, many Indian metropolises have become centers for the construction of new high-rise structures, with Mumbai unquestionably at the top of the list. Mumbai has India’s greatest concentration of high-rises, with nearly 200 skyscrapers and 12,000 built high-rise structures. Aside from having the highest rises overall, it is also noted to have the highest rises currently under construction. The study examines the status of fire safety requirements in high-rise buildings, considering the planning, specification, and time required for evacuation in the context of India. These towering structures are mostly residences. High-rise buildings used to be primarily driven by the focus on their structure, but evolving trends and developments in construction techniques give architects and designers more creative and architectural freedom in the current times. Such emphasis on creative and architectural aspects at times results in compromising with the safety aspects of these high-rise buildings, for instance, fire safety. Three case studies are presented to map existing fire safety, its functioning, and safety measures during the evacuation in the context of the Indian scenario. A critical requirement ensures fire safety services enable building occupants to behave safely on their own during fires. The current legal requirements for fire safety fail to deliver adequate support to people during emergencies. The current study’s findings support these proposed recommendations that will create substantial effects on public fire safety programs by raising awareness about high-rise building fire risks and their causes and effects. The legislation needs improvement to explicitly regulate fire safety in high-rise buildings while establishing regular inspection requirements and designing evacuation and firefighting exercises with building occupants.