The main purpose of the project is to encourage multilateral co-operation in the collection and analysis of data relating to fire events. The objectives of the NEA Fire Project are to:

• collect fire event experience (by international exchange) in an appropriate format in a quality-assured and consistent database
• collect and analyse fire events over the long term so as to better understand such events and their causes, and to encourage their prevention
• generate qualitative insights into the root causes of fire events in order to derive approaches or mechanisms for their prevention and to mitigate their consequences
• establish a mechanism for efficient operation feedback on fire event experience including the development of policies of prevention, such as indicators for risk-informed and performance-based inspections
• record characteristics of fire events in order to facilitate fire risk analysis, including quantification of fire frequencies.

Coding guidelines and a quality assurance manual have been developed and validated by the project's participants. The project participants have set up structures within their countries to collect and validate data for the project, which is now widely seen as the reference international database for fire events.

After having established the project quality guidelines and the quality-assurance procedure, data acquisition had proceeded according to plan. An updated version of the database was provided to all participants annually. Currently, the event database contains more than 490 events. One or two meetings of the project steering body are held each year with the NEA's support.

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