The total cost of fire in the United States

Zhuang, J; Payyappalli, VM; Behrendt, A; Lukasiewicz, K

HERO ID

7310233

Reference Type

Technical Report

Year

2017

Language

English

HERO ID 7310233
Year 2017
Title The total cost of fire in the United States
Authors Zhuang, J; Payyappalli, VM; Behrendt, A; Lukasiewicz, K
Publisher Text National Fire Protection Association
City Quincy, MA
Abstract This report presents the total cost of fire in the United States for the years 1980 to 2014. The cost of fire for the years 2015 and later are not calculated as most of the data sources used are available only until 2014. The total cost of fire is defined as the collective of all net expenditure on fire protection and all net losses due to fire incidents. For 2014, the total is $328.5 billion, which was 1.9% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The expenditures constitute $273.1 billion (83.1% of total) and the losses constitute $55.4 billion (16.9% of total). The fire safety costs in building construction is the largest component at $57.4 billion (17.5% of total). This report provides updated prevention, protection, and mitigation costs. This has been achieved through (a) creating a taxonomy for mutually exclusive expenditures and losses based on findings from extensive literature review to ensure a complete accounting of the cost of fire, and (b) using analytical methodologies from literature review of fire and other hazard impacts to account for each defined facet of cost and loss. These methods will guide the calculation of the total cost of fire in being complete, precise, and standardized for future application by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) community. Future research directions, including regression analysis to find relationships between quantifiable factors of costs and losses, are also provided.
Report Number FPRF-2017-21
Url https://www.nfpa.org//-/media/Files/News-and-Research/Fire-statistics-and-reports/US-Fire-Problem/RFTotalCost.pdf
Is Certified Translation No
Dupe Override No
Number Of Pages 55
Is Public Yes
Language Text English