Environmental Impact of Structural Fire Engineering for Sustainable Building Design: Current Practices and Future Directions

ABSTRACT In the climate emergency context, it is necessary to consider the several existing structural fire engineering strategies through the lens of sustainability, hence assessing the environmental impact of the current structural fire engineering practices to minimise it, based on the project's specificities. However, it is equally necessary to raise awareness of how environmental targets may affect the structural performance of a building in the event of a fire. This paper offers an overview of the existing strategies and recent developments to decrease the embodied carbon and foster circularity for structural fire engineering. Low‐carbon emission materials, optimisation strategies for structural systems and fire protection, and circularity principles like design for disassembly and reuse of structural elements are discussed. Finally, a case study of an office building is presented to analyse the embodied carbon of different equivalent design and structural fire engineering practices, indicating the potential for reducing the climate impact in a fire safety context.