Fire incidents are a central issue in Saudi civil defence. Despite detailed regulation
concerning firefighting equipment dealing with dwelling fires, fires occur frequently.
Globally, research on dwelling fire safety is relatively new. Most studies focus on
human factors, incidence and causal issues. Few studies examine management or
policy-making perspectives towards managing these individual agents. Thus, a
detailed study on understanding the management of these factors for dwelling fires is
long overdue.
The study uses an inductive approach to investigate key management issues in
reducing dwelling fires in Saudi Arabia. This qualitative study consisted of twelve indepth
semi-structured interviews and four focus groups with senior managers of the
Civil Defence Division dealing with fire safety. A sustainability-based framework is developed to map the critical issues in
generating a long-term planning solution to policy and management of fire hazard
and risk in Saudi Arabia. Critical drivers of this sustainability approach are good
management, regulation, governance practices: especially accountability and
transparency; reduction of tribalism, bureaucracy, and burns unit efficiency.
However, given the modern environment of communications, information technology
and communications, and in particular public education, are viewed as important
mediators between drivers and sustainability. The critical role of knowledge
generation is also positioned as a mediator.
The framework proposed is a paradigm shift from merely managing fire incidents on
a case by case basis to a proactive risk reduction strategy. This represents an
original solution to managing fire hazards at a national level and an important
contribution to the fire management literature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/15302 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Al-Sharabi, Faisal |
| Contributors | Kamala, Mumtaz A. |
| Publisher | University of Bradford, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, doctoral, PhD |
| Rights | <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />The University of Bradford theses are licenced under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/">Creative Commons Licence</a>. |
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