Car Park in Höfðatorg, Reykjavik

Contractor: PK Hönnun
Project: Fire design of large parking structure connected to 7 large buildings
Scope of work:
A performance based fire design was applied to the parking structure that was built in 2 floors with each 8000 m² floor area. The total number of parking places was approximately 800 parking places making it one of the largest underground parking structures in Iceland.
The parking has a complicated layout with large open areas. Seven buildings with the height of 7 to 19 floors, are planned to connect to the underground parking structure.
The work comprised of development of a fire safety strategy and fire system design strategy for the underground car park and the connection to the buildings above.
The establishment of design fires and detailed modeling of fire growth and spread with extensive CFD calculations were used to determine the smoke extract design and the safety of people and the building structure.
Evacuation calculations were carried out to ensure the safety of people and lead to increased distances between the emergency exits as a result.
A probabilistic risk analysis was conducted. Fault trees and event trees were used to calculate the probability of a fire in the structure together with the risk of spread between cars as well as the probability of a probable worst case scenario.
With extensive fire safety calculation and a holistic risk approach the fire safety measures could be optimized with respect to safety of people and building cost.

Issued: 24.6.2009