The new Italian Fire Code: a more performance-based approach to fire safety design

Fire safety codes and regulations play critical roles in buildings and high hazard industries, helping to mitigate risks and achieve acceptable levels of safety. On 20th of August 2015, the Italian Home Office released the Ministerial Decree 3rd August 2015 that contains a new approach to the fire safety design of working activities subjected to fire inspection. The technical Ministerial Decree is commonly recognised among Italian fire officers and fire practitioners as the Fire Prevention Code (FPC). FPC has been thought and developed within the Italian National Fire Rescue and Service by fire officer engineers and fire practitioner experts to simplify and rationalize the fire safety design. This paper describes the new design approach proposed by the FPC highlighting how the fire safety is more oriented to a performance base design rather than a prescriptive one.