Improvement of Fire Extinguishing Performance by Decentralized Supply of Fire-Fighting Agents

One of the central problems in fire safety science and technology is to reduce damage caused by both fires and fire-fighting processes. This paper provides a potential solution to the problem, and it derives from decentralization of fire-fighting agents. In particular, this paper investigates fire extinguishing performance when a fire-fighting agent is supplied to a fire from one direction with one extinguisher and from two directions with two extinguishers. The two methods are called the centralized supply and the decentralized supply, respectively, in this paper. It is demonstrated that the decentralized supply reduces damage caused by both fires and fire-fighting processes. This follows from the facts that fire extinguishment by the decentralized supply is more certain than the centralized supply, and that the decentralized supply requires less total amount of a fire-fighting agent than the centralized supply for fire extinguishment.