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Contents
  1. 1Codes, standards and guides
  2. 2From document to legal requirement
  3. 3Editions and the code of record
  4. 4Sprinkler and fire alarm standards
  5. 5Fire data and research
  6. 6Engineering publications and performance-based design
  7. 7Limits and common misunderstandings
  8. 8See also
  9. 9Notes
  10. 10References

NFPA, the National Fire Protection Association, is an organisation that develops, publishes and distributes consensus codes and standards intended to minimise the possibility and effects of fire and other risks.[1] It is based in Quincy, Massachusetts, in the United States.[2] In 2004 more than 300 of these codes and standards were in use around the world, together forming the series known as the National Fire Codes.[1] They carry great weight because governments at all levels, from local to international, use them as a basis for legislation and regulation.[1] Insurers also use them for risk evaluation, and designers cite them in designs and specifications.[1]

In the United States, the building and fire safety regulations of states and local jurisdictions are based on model codes developed by two private-sector organisations, the International Code Council and NFPA.[3] An NFPA document is not law in itself, however: it becomes binding only when a jurisdiction adopts it, often with local changes and not always in its latest edition.[4][5] NFPA also runs an annual survey of fire departments that underpins national fire loss estimates in the United States.[6] In addition, it publishes engineering reference works, such as the third edition of the SFPE Handbook of Fire Protection Engineering.[2]

Codes, standards and guides

NFPA documents are identified by a number and an edition year, and they include codes, standards, recommended practices and guides.[7] NUREG-1805, a 2004 report for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), lists them from NFPA 1, the Uniform Fire Code, to NFPA 5000, the Building Construction and Safety Code.[7] Between them are installation documents such as NFPA 13 for sprinkler systems, the National Electrical Code (NFPA 70) and the National Fire Alarm Code (NFPA 72).[7] There are also fire test methods, such as NFPA 251 for the fire endurance of building construction, and standards on the professional qualifications of firefighters and fire investigators.[7] Guides used in fire safety engineering include NFPA 550, the Guide to the Fire Safety Concepts Tree, and NFPA 551, the Guide for the Evaluation of Fire Risk Assessments.[7]

NFPA documents are developed and maintained by technical committees, and the members of these committees include practitioners from outside NFPA.[8] Russell Fleming, vice-president of engineering at the National Fire Sprinkler Association, had served on more than a dozen of them, including the Committee on Automatic Sprinklers.[9] A committee can also change the status of a document. After discussions in the 1970s on the phased evacuation of tall buildings, an NFPA committee developed a guide for emergency voice communication systems, NFPA 72F, which was later made a standard.[10] In 2002 the SFPE Handbook reported a new NFPA Technical Committee on Fire Risk Analysis.[8] Its purpose was to give the other committees guidance on methods and concepts of fire risk analysis.[8]

Two NFPA codes cover buildings rather than individual systems. In the early 1900s NFPA began developing a "life safety code" for the safety of building occupants.[11] This code, NFPA 101, is not a building code, but it is frequently used as a supplement to building codes.[11][12] NIST, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, describes NFPA 101 as widely adopted for its requirements on life safety in fires.[12] In 2002 NFPA also published a model building code of its own, the Building Construction and Safety Code (NFPA 5000).[11]

From document to legal requirement

In the United States, building regulations are a task of state and local governments. These can either write their own regulations or adopt a model building code developed by a not-for-profit membership organisation.[13] Using a model code is the main choice, and the codes are adopted with varying levels of amendment.[13] The model codes in turn adopt by reference voluntary consensus standards from private standards development organisations, among them NFPA and ASTM International.[3] In June 2005 NIST reported that NFPA's National Electrical Code was used in virtually all US jurisdictions.[3]

These model codes and referenced standards do not become law until a jurisdiction that is empowered to enforce regulations adopts them, either by legislation or administratively.[4] The jurisdiction may modify specific provisions to suit local conditions and practice, and once adopted, the modified codes and standards together are referred to as building regulations.[4] When standards are referenced in the building regulations in this way, they are legally binding.[13] A few federal rules, for example for hospitals, also require compliance with documents such as NFPA 101 in addition to the requirements of the state.[13]

NFPA documents pass through jurisdiction-specific adoption before becoming legal requirements.
Legal effect depends on adoption, scope and edition. Based on Keough and Grill (2005), pp. 1–2 and Iqbal and Salley (2004), p. E-1.

New York City shows how far an adopted text can differ from the published one. Its building code adopted sections, but not the full content, of the National Fire Alarm Code and the National Electrical Code as a city Reference Standard.[5] The editions it referenced were not the latest ones.[5] The city's general fire alarm requirements in Reference Standard RS 17-5 were based on NFPA 72 but highly modified, with many sections deleted and many others changed.[14] Most other building codes, by contrast, reference the national consensus standards as published.[14]

Building regulation is not the only route by which NFPA documents take effect. Many NFPA codes are referenced in the regulations of US federal agencies such as the NRC, the General Services Administration and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.[1] In New Zealand, the 2013 commentary on Verification Method C/VM2 explains that the ten design scenarios of that method are partly based on the scenarios in NFPA 5000. They were modified and expanded to cover, for example, fire spread to neighbouring property and firefighting facilities.[15] The Australian handbook for the Fire Safety Verification Method (2020) likewise names NFPA 5000, together with C/VM2, as an example of prescribing the design scenarios that an analysis must consider.[16]

Editions and the code of record

NFPA codes and standards are constantly revised and updated on cycles of three to five years.[1] NUREG-1805 calls the code or standard in effect at the time of design or implementation the code of record for that application.[1] Keough and Grill (2005) explain the consequence. A code or standard in effect when a system is designed applies to that system during its existence, even if the authority adopts newer editions before the project is completed.[5] Because of the time lag between the development of a code and its adoption, the most recent edition is usually not applicable to a project unless it contains retroactive provisions.[5]

New editions move through adoption into project-specific code-of-record decisions.
The newest edition is not automatically the applicable edition. Based on Keough and Grill (2005), pp. 1–2 and Iqbal and Salley (2004), p. E-1.

Retroactive provisions are the exception rather than the rule. Normal practice is not to apply building code changes to existing buildings unless they undergo major renovation or a change in primary use.[12] Even so, two New York City local laws of 1973 and 1984 contained retroactive provisions.[12] The Life Safety Code is a notable case, because NIST notes that NFPA 101 applies retroactively to all buildings, whether or not any work is being done on them.[17]

Edition control matters outside the United States as well. The first edition of the New Zealand C/VM2 required its referenced documents to be used in the editions it listed, among them NFPA 285 of 1998, a fire test for exterior walls.[18] The second edition of C/VM2 (2025) removed its references to building product standards, including NFPA 285, and points instead to separate Building Product Specifications.[19] The Australian data sheets of 2020 cite NFPA 72 in its 2019 edition, whereas the NUREG-1805 list of 2004 gives the 2002 edition.[20][7]

A specialised example of edition and change control comes from US nuclear power plants. NFPA completed NFPA 805, a performance-based standard for fire protection at light water reactor electric generating plants, in 2001.[21] From 16 July 2004 the NRC allowed existing reactor licensees to adopt it voluntarily as an alternative to the existing deterministic fire protection requirements.[21] Under NFPA 805 and the rule that adopts it, any change to a previously approved element of the fire protection programme requires a change evaluation.[21] Such elements include system design, maintenance, procedures and impairments.[21]

Sprinkler and fire alarm standards

For sprinkler systems, the central document is NFPA 13, a design and installation standard for automatic sprinkler systems that is referenced by most building codes in the United States and Canada.[22] For the water supply, NFPA 13 refers to other NFPA standards, such as NFPA 20 for fire pumps, NFPA 22 for water tanks and NFPA 24 for private fire service mains.[22] From its 1999 edition NFPA 13 also absorbed the special standards for warehouse storage, which had contained their own sprinkler design criteria.[22] A further standard, NFPA 25, covers the inspection, testing and maintenance of water-based fire protection systems.[7]

Fleming (2002) stresses that the fire suppression side of sprinkler design is empirical. Some criteria rest on full-scale tests, such as those for large drop and early suppression fast response sprinklers.[22] Most NFPA 13 protection criteria, however, are the result of evolution and experienced judgement.[22] In the 1970s the capabilities of pipe schedule systems, which had shown a hundred years of satisfactory performance, were codified into area/density curves. This opened the way for hydraulic calculations of the water flow through the piping.[22] Classifying the occupancy hazard remains the most critical step of the design and requires experienced judgement and familiarity with the relevant NFPA standards.[22]

NFPA published the first fire alarm signalling standard in 1899, the first of many editions that led to the National Fire Alarm Code (NFPA 72).[5] Keough and Grill (2005) call NFPA 72 the baseline standard used throughout the United States for fire alarms.[5] It gives performance requirements for the equipment and devices of a fire alarm system.[5] It does not say where a system or its devices are required, because that follows from the building code of the jurisdiction.[5] The National Electrical Code (NFPA 70) covers how the supporting cables and hardware are installed, not which devices are needed.[5]

Parts of NFPA 72 also serve as engineering data. The t-squared growth rate, the most popular way of estimating how a design fire grows, was originally developed in the 1970s to predict the activation of fire detectors.[23] It became popular when it was included in the appendix of NFPA 72, which defines slow, medium and fast fires by the time they take to reach 1055 kW.[23] The Australian data sheets for the Fire Safety Verification Method name Appendix B of NFPA 72 as an example of guidance on calculating the activation times of smoke and heat detectors.[24]

Fire data and research

NFPA also contributes to the fire statistics of the United States. National estimates of fire experience combine detailed data from the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) of the US Fire Administration with NFPA's annual survey of fire departments.[6] The survey is used to scale the NFIRS data up to national totals.[6] NFIRS captures roughly a million fire incidents a year, but this is only an estimated half of the fires reported to US fire departments.[6] The NFPA survey is a stratified random sample of roughly one-tenth of all US fire departments, including most of those that protect a population of at least 100,000.[6] Its sampling uncertainty is about 10 per cent for deaths and much less for other measures of fire loss.[6]

Two NFPA staff members, John R. Hall Jr. and Martha J. Ahrens, wrote the chapter on data for engineering analysis in the SFPE Handbook.[25] At the time, Hall was NFPA's assistant vice-president for fire analysis and research, and Ahrens was a fire analysis specialist.[25] They group the data needed for fire hazard and fire risk analysis into incident and field observation data, usage or exposure data, and laboratory test results.[25] Exposure data supply the denominators of rates, such as the number of portable heaters in use or the floor area of offices. With these, a count of fires becomes a frequency, such as fires per year per heater in use.[25]

Incident records, exposure data, field observations and tests support analysis.
Main types of data for fire analysis. The arrows show examples of use; hazard and risk analyses typically need the same generic types of data. Based on Hall and Ahrens (2002), pp. 5-65–5-67.

Analyses of NFPA data are also used outside the United States. The Australian data sheets for the Fire Safety Verification Method (2020) take values for wet pipe sprinkler systems from an NFPA analysis of US fires in 2007–2011.[26] In residential properties, the sprinklers operated in 95 per cent of the fires large enough to activate them.[26] They were effective in 97 per cent of those fires, so they operated effectively in 92 per cent.[26] The same data sheets draw on NFPA's periodic report on smoke alarms in US home fires, whose 2015 edition covers 2009–2013.[20] In that period, battery-powered smoke alarms operated in 80 per cent of the home fires large enough to activate them, and hard-wired alarms with battery backup in 95 per cent.[20]

NFPA has also taken part in research on human behaviour in fire. In the days after the attacks of 11 September 2001, NFPA and the National Research Council Canada began to collect published first-person accounts of World Trade Center survivors.[27] The material was coded and analysed to understand the evacuation experiences of survivors on different floors of the two towers.[27] NIST contracted the two organisations to index a collection of more than 700 previously published interviews with survivors for its own investigation.[28] The SFPE Handbook adds that fire risk analysis methods have been a recurring emphasis of projects organised by NFPA's Fire Protection Research Foundation.[8]

Engineering publications and performance-based design

NFPA also publishes reference works for fire safety engineering, such as the third edition of the SFPE Handbook (2002), whose copyright belongs to the Society of Fire Protection Engineers.[2] One of the two editors of the handbook's section on fire risk analysis came from NFPA.[2] NUREG-1805 derived the technical basis of its fire hazard calculation tools primarily from this handbook and from the NFPA Fire Protection Handbook.[29] The International Fire Engineering Guidelines (IFEG, 2005) list two NFPA books, the Fire Protection Handbook and Introduction to Performance Based Fire Safety, among their reference works. They also name two NFPA journals, Fire Technology and the NFPA Journal.[30]

NFPA and SFPE are separate bodies with different roles. The IFEG list them as two distinct organisations that publish fire engineering knowledge, and NIST groups SFPE with the engineering societies rather than with the code and standards organisations.[30][3] After its World Trade Center investigation, NIST named both bodies in 2005 for work on standard methods for multi-floor design fire scenarios and on training in computational fire dynamics.[31]

NFPA's codes also offer routes to performance-based design. According to the IFEG, NFPA has not developed an independent performance code but has included a performance option in its building code, NFPA 5000 (2003).[13] Most US jurisdictions, however, use prescriptive codes and handle alternative designs through equivalency clauses.[13] An older tool for such equivalency is the Fire Safety Evaluation System, published in NFPA 101A.[32] It is a risk-indexing method for showing that certain institutional buildings reach a level of safety equivalent to that of the Life Safety Code.[32] US codes leave the decision on what counts as equivalent to the local jurisdiction.[32]

NFPA 550, the Guide to the Fire Safety Concepts Tree, is one of the most widely cited fault tree formats in fire risk analysis.[8] The tree records the deliberations and professional judgements of an NFPA technical committee and divides fire safety into two branches, preventing fire ignition and managing fire impact.[33] One branch or the other must succeed for the fire safety objectives to be met.[33] The Australian handbook for the Fire Safety Verification Method (2020) derives one of its event trees from the manage fire impact branch of this tree.[34]

Limits and common misunderstandings

An NFPA document is not binding merely because it exists or is widely cited. In the United States, an NFPA code or standard becomes law only when a jurisdiction adopts it, possibly with changes, and only in the edition that the jurisdiction has chosen.[4][5] In New Zealand, for example, Verification Method C/VM2 based its ten design scenarios only partly on those in NFPA 5000, and modified and expanded them to cover further fire events.[15]

A second limit is scope. NFPA 72 covers the performance of alarm equipment but not where alarms are needed, and most protection criteria of NFPA 13 rest on experience rather than on calculations of fire suppression.[5][22] For fire alarms, Keough and Grill (2005) state that the building code of the jurisdiction with authority over a building defines what alarm requirements apply to it, and when and where.[5]

Fire statistics have limits of their own. Participation in NFIRS and reporting practices are not uniform across regions and sizes of community, so NFIRS may be susceptible to systematic biases.[6] This is why the NFPA survey is used to calibrate it.[6] Fires with an unknown characteristic, such as an unreported cause, are usually allocated in proportion to the fires where it is known, which assumes that both groups are alike.[6] Hall and Ahrens add that, at the time of writing, no one could quantify how far NFIRS deviates from an ideal, representative sample.[6]

Finally, as publisher of the SFPE Handbook, NFPA states in the book's liability notice that the work is published to circulate information and opinion among those concerned with fire and electrical safety.[2] Neither NFPA nor the authors guarantee the accuracy or completeness of its contents, or accept liability for damage resulting from its use.[2] They supply information and opinion but do not attempt to render engineering or other professional services.[2] Where such services are required, the notice advises seeking the help of an appropriate professional.[2]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Iqbal and Salley (2004), p. E-1.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 DiNenno et al. (2002), pp. iii–iv.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005), p. 201.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Lew et al. (2005), p. 142.
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 Keough and Grill (2005), p. 2.
  6. ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 Hall and Ahrens (2002), pp. 5-67–5-68.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 Iqbal and Salley (2004), pp. E-1–E-13.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 Watts and Hall (2002), p. 5-7.
  9. ↑ Fleming (2002), p. 4-72.
  10. ↑ Lew et al. (2005), p. 162.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Lew et al. (2005), p. 37.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Lew et al. (2005), p. 141.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 National Research Council of Canada et al. (2005), Part 0 (United States), pp. 0.2-2–0.2-5.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Lew et al. (2005), p. 150.
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2013), p. 121.
  16. ↑ Australian Building Codes Board (2020b), p. 8.
  17. ↑ National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005), p. 221.
  18. ↑ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2013), pp. 3–4.
  19. ↑ Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2025b), p. 3.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 Australian Building Codes Board (2020a), Data Sheet C3, pp. 109–111.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Hyslop et al. (2010), p. 1-1.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 22.5 22.6 22.7 Fleming (2002), p. 4-73.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (2013), p. 53.
  24. ↑ Australian Building Codes Board (2020a), Data Sheet C3, p. 100.
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 25.3 Hall and Ahrens (2002), p. 5-65.
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 Australian Building Codes Board (2020a), Data Sheet C2, p. 76.
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Fahy and Proulx (2005), p. 1.
  28. ↑ National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005), p. 157.
  29. ↑ Iqbal and Salley (2004), p. xxxvii.
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 National Research Council of Canada et al. (2005), Part 0 (United States), pp. 0.5-7–0.5-10.
  31. ↑ National Institute of Standards and Technology (2005), pp. 212, 223.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 Watts (2002), pp. 5-129–5-131.
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Meacham (2002), p. 5-158.
  34. ↑ Australian Building Codes Board (2020b), p. 120.

References

  • Australian Building Codes Board. (2020a). Data sheets: Fire Safety Verification Method (Handbook annex, Print version 1.1).
  • Australian Building Codes Board. (2020b). Handbook: Fire Safety Verification Method (Print version 1.1).
  • DiNenno, P. J., Drysdale, D., Beyler, C. L., Walton, W. D., Custer, R. L. P., Hall, J. R., Jr., & Watts, J. M., Jr. (Eds.). (2002). SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed.). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
  • Fahy, R. F., & Proulx, G. (2005). Analysis of published accounts of the World Trade Center evacuation (NIST NCSTAR 1-7A). National Institute of Standards and Technology.
  • Fleming, R. P. (2002). Automatic sprinkler system calculations. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 4-72–4-87). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
  • Hall, J. R., Jr., & Ahrens, M. J. (2002). Data for engineering analysis. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 5-65–5-78). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
  • Hyslop, J. S., Kratchman, J., Siu, N., Afshar, C., Najafi, B., Joglar, F., Li, Y., Henneke, D., & Warner, M. (2010). Fire probabilistic risk assessment methods enhancements: Supplement 1 to NUREG/CR-6850 and EPRI 1011989 (NUREG/CR-6850, Supplement 1; EPRI 1019259). Electric Power Research Institute; U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research.
  • Iqbal, N., & Salley, M. H. (2004). Fire Dynamics Tools (FDTs): Quantitative fire hazard analysis methods for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fire Protection Inspection Program (NUREG-1805). U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
  • Keough, R. J., & Grill, R. A. (2005). Fire alarm systems (NIST NCSTAR 1-4C). National Institute of Standards and Technology.
  • Lew, H. S., Bukowski, R. W., & Carino, N. J. (2005). Design, construction, and maintenance of structural and life safety systems (NIST NCSTAR 1-1). National Institute of Standards and Technology.
  • Meacham, B. J. (2002). Building fire risk analysis. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 5-153–5-175). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
  • Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2013). Commentary for Building Code clauses C1–C6 and Verification Method C/VM2.
  • Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. (2025b). Verification Method C/VM2: Framework for fire safety design (2nd ed.).
  • National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2005). Final report on the collapse of the World Trade Center towers (NIST NCSTAR 1).
  • National Research Council of Canada, International Code Council, Department of Building and Housing, & Australian Building Codes Board. (2005). International fire engineering guidelines (2005 ed.). Australian Building Codes Board.
  • Watts, J. M., Jr. (2002). Fire risk indexing. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 5-125–5-142). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
  • Watts, J. M., Jr., & Hall, J. R., Jr. (2002). Introduction to fire risk analysis. In P. J. DiNenno, D. Drysdale, C. L. Beyler, W. D. Walton, R. L. P. Custer, J. R. Hall Jr., & J. M. Watts Jr. (Eds.), SFPE handbook of fire protection engineering (3rd ed., pp. 5-1–5-7). National Fire Protection Association; Society of Fire Protection Engineers.
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