Analysing Fire Risk in Automated High Bay Warehouses - Applying the IEC model for risk analysis on high bay warehouses

This master thesis presents a framework, aimed at assessing fire risk in large automated warehouses. The International Electrotechnical Commission’s (IEC) framework, Risk analysis of technological systems, provides the base, as to the functions of a risk analysis framework and this is subsequently adopted and expanded to better suit the fire risk analysis in high-bay warehouses. The framework presented is mainly intended for automated high bay areas, but it is the authors’ belief that the methodologies used can be applied to other premises where ignition sources are scarce and not readily analysed. The methodology presented analyses risk in a quantitative manner, and is predominantly based on event tree analysis. The ignition frequency is assumed to be related to floor area and the fire consequence is approximated by utilising damage criteria limits. In order to assess the proposed methodology, a case study was performed at Ikea’s high bay warehouse in Älmhult, Sweden