A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW ON THE IMPACT OF NFPA-COMPLIANT FIRE PROTECTION SYSTEMS ON U.S. INFRASTRUCTURE RESILIENCE

Abstract

This systematic review evaluates how NFPA-compliant fire protection systems contribute to infrastructure resilience in the United States by linking code-conforming design and maintenance to measurable outcomes. Following PRISMA 2020, we searched major databases and grey sources, screened records in duplicate, extracted standardized measures, appraised risk of bias, and synthesized evidence using random effects and narrative methods. In total, 115 studies met the inclusion criteria, spanning healthcare, industrial and energy facilities, transportation tunnels and stations, data centers, and high-rise residential and commercial buildings. Across the corpus, verified compliance and disciplined inspection, testing, and maintenance were consistently associated with better life-safety and continuity outcomes, including higher odds of confinement to room or area of origin, lower injuries and direct losses, reduced nuisance alarms, and shorter downtime. Paired systems performed best; detection with automatic suppression yielded additive gains, and smoke management improved egress tenability under door-open conditions. Moderators included governance quality, building vintage, hazard severity, and water or power redundancy. Framed through robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and rapidity, findings show that NFPA-aligned hardware governed by auditable compliance and maintenance functions as an engineered risk control that compresses severe-event tails and accelerates recovery. Economic signals from studies reporting business interruption aligned with physical loss containment, supporting favorable present-value cases for sustained compliance and maintenance programs. Practically, the review recommends outcome-oriented acceptance testing tuned to credible scenarios, portfolio dashboards tracking confinement and restoration metrics, and prioritization of high-leverage components such as pumps, supervisory valves, detection networks, and smoke control interfaces to deliver reliable, sector-specific resilience gains.