Characteristics of combustibles, ventilation openings, compartment geometry, material properties of enclosure
boundary [9] and environmental factors [10] (such as wind effect on high-rise buildings) are important factors in
determining how severe a fire is. In order to characterize fires for use in performance-based design and fire risk
analysis, information on fire load must be obtained. Fire load survey is the direct way to collect associated
information which can provide a basis for the design fire. It has been proven in literature [3,11-17] that fire loads are
dependent on the occupancy type and building use. There are many surveys made for office buildings [e.g.11-14]
and a few are made on schools [e.g.15] and other type of buildings [e.g.16, 17]. Due to privacy issues, it is more
difficult to make a fire load survey in residential buildings than in other buildings. Thus, fire load data on high-rise
residential buildings are relatively few and up-to-date information is even scarce. Since heat release rate for design
fires is closely related with the corresponding fire load data, the heat release rate for design fires and fire load survey
techniques for high-rise residential buildings are discussed in this paper.