And it also makes a bit of a nonsense of a few determinations knocking back open plan designs with sprinkler protection.
My tuppence worth here is that IMO the safety is very much reliant on the alarm system. A cause & effect showing the difference without an alarm would more than likely show that good old passive protection keeps the escape route viable much longer.
Also they mention that their research assumes that the sprinkler system always works, then they add a little snippet that reliability would be 'over 90%'. If I see a claim such as 'over 90%' I will always assume that it is lower than 95% otherwise they would have said 'over 95%' or 'almost 95%'. Therefore, giving the benefit of the doubt and taking an optimistic 95% reliability into account are we saying that it is ok to have sub-standard fire safety in 5% of dwellings designed this way? Also we must be assuming 100% reliability of the alarm system, (Which we are heavily relying on) so given true reliability figures, (Wiz or someone might be able to put some numbers to this) that would take that figure of 5% up a little higher.
All those bits aside, we can mess around with figures and "what-if"s all day long, I think that the provision of sprinklers would always be an improvement.
