{"id":2999,"date":"2016-11-21T23:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-21T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.aertecsolutions.com\/el-desafio-del-diseno-contra-incendio-en-terminales-de-pasajeros\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T14:38:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T14:38:29","slug":"the-challenge-of-fire-design-in-passenger-terminals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/blog\/el-desafio-del-diseno-contra-incendio-en-terminales-de-pasajeros\/","title":{"rendered":"The challenge of fire design in passenger terminals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Among the many difficulties that the design of the <strong>Airport terminals<\/strong> passengers, perhaps one of the most important and sometimes overlooked, is the design from a fire-fighting perspective.<\/p>\n<p>In Spain, the <strong>Technical Building Code<\/strong>, CTE, establishes the legal framework for complying with the basic requirements demanded in fire safety in buildings. It offers a rigid set of rules and procedures that are compiled in the Basic Document of Fire Safety as a recipe book, where parameters such as maximum evacuation route lengths or maximum dimensions of fire compartments are defined, which are to be valid for all types of buildings, but\u2026 what happens in a passenger terminal where compartment surfaces often exceed the maximums established in the standard? Or how is the evacuation of occupants reconciled without compromising the airport's operations and security?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Post-incendios-terminal-ESP.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-20355 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Post-incendios-terminal-ESP.jpg\" alt=\"post-fire-terminal\" width=\"300\" height=\"272\"><\/a>Fortunately, the CTE itself in article 5.1 allows <strong>Justify the safety conditions<\/strong> of a building in fire matters through alternative solutions.<\/p>\n<p>Our experience at airports leads us to recommend carrying out a <strong>Analysis of the building's fire protection based on effectiveness and performance<\/strong>. This way, a set of specific measures is created with the aim of safeguarding human life without forgetting the operation of the airport itself. For this purpose, the Guide to Performance-Based Fire Protection Engineering, developed by the <em>Society of Fire Protection Engineers<\/em>, provides a methodology where it defines the sequence of steps to be followed to achieve the established goals as objectives.<\/p>\n<p>For example, to justify the safe evacuation of occupants, the objective proposed is that people have sufficient time to reach exits without being dangerously affected by the effects of a fire. To achieve this, it is necessary to first analyse the type of passenger and their travel speed, the actual occupancy of the building, the fire detection time, and the time it takes for the passenger to start moving on to proceed with the evacuation. Subsequently, they are employed <strong>simulation programs to calculate total time<\/strong> How long does it take to evacuate the occupants.<\/p>\n<p>Concurrently, the available time for evacuation is calculated using a <strong>Computational fluid dynamics model<\/strong> to simulate fire development. This way, it is possible to estimate the time it takes for the environment to reach temperatures, smoke levels, radiation, CO concentrations, or visibility that are incompatible with people's safety. Finally, both values are compared in order to determine whether evacuation is safe or not. If it is not, solutions are proposed which are then included in a new simulation process until all deficiencies are ultimately corrected.<\/p>\n<p>Recently, we applied this method to a terminal with 80,000 m2 of surface area. Throughout the process, a <strong>redefinition<\/strong> of evacuation lengths, the smoke control system was redesigned, sprinkler installation assessed, and a bespoke fire protection solution for the terminal was created. All of this provided <strong>a saving of \u20ac1.8 million, always guaranteeing the safety of people<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-20353\" src=\"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/cabecera-382.jpg\" alt=\"Header-382\" width=\"1024\" height=\"383\"><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Entre las dificultades que plantea el dise\u00f1o de las terminales aeroportuarias de pasajeros, tal vez una de las m\u00e1s importantes, est\u00e1 el dise\u00f1o desde el punto de vista de la lucha contra incendios&#8230;<\/p>","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":3000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,31,25,28,69,45,35,68,54,50,30,39],"class_list":["post-2999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-aeropuertos","tag-arquitectura","tag-eficiencia","tag-ingenieria","tag-innovacion","tag-pasajero","tag-planificacion-y-diseno-aeropuertos","tag-procesos","tag-proyectos","tag-seguridad","tag-tecnologia","tag-terminales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8018,"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999\/revisions\/8018"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aertecsolutions.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}