This chapter defines terms as they will be used in this document.

Authority Having Jurisdiction (AHJ)

An organization, office, or individual responsible for approving designs, equipment, installations, or procedures.

Building

Any structure used or intended for supporting or sheltering any use or occupancy.

Building Characteristics

A set of data that provides a detailed description of a building, such as building layout (geometry), access and egress, construction, building materials, contents, building services, and fire safety (hardware) systems (see 8.2.3.3).

Client

The party for which professional services are rendered.

Confidence Interval

A statistical range with a specified probability that a given parameter lies within the range.

Design Criteria

See also Performance Criteria.

Design Fire Curve

An engineering description of the development of a fire for use in a design fire scenario. Design fire curves might be described in terms of heat release rate versus time, or in other terms (see 8.5.4).

Design Fire Scenario

A set of conditions that defines or describes the critical factors for determining outcomes of trial designs (see 8.5).

Design Objective

A description of the performance benchmark against which the predicted performance of a design is evaluated.

Deterministic Analysis

A methodology based on physical relationships derived from scientific theories and empirical results that for a given set of initial conditions will always produce the same result or prediction. In a deterministic analysis, a single set of input data will determine a specific set of output predictions.

Final Design

The design that is selected from among the successful trial...