A Delineation of Fire Risk Zones by Urban Blocks

Frequent man-made hazards, especially in the cases of urban fires, have caused serious loss and strong impact on the society. Most studies on fire prevention focus on buildings themselves, such as fire protection facilities, the usage of uninflammable materials, the design of partitions for preventing from fire hazard, etc. However, few researches discuss how to manage fire hazard in community scale concerning surrounding environments, space structure, land use, etc. Recently, urban plans are requested to take hazard mitigation into account. It demands more studies on the urban scale. Hence, this research proposes an evaluation method to assess fire risk degree in terms of urban blocks.
This research constructs a framework of fire risk evaluation. It assumes that urban fire facilities, such as fire hydrants and water supply, are distributed equally and properly. It also considers that fire protection facilities within buildings can be aging. Risk is defined as the multiplication of probability and loss. The probability of fire associated with building types is estimated according to the frequency of fire in past years divided by the total number of that building type. The loss of fire disaster is estimated by their median loss against property value. Finally, we analyze fire risks using GIS and divide the results into three equal ranks, namely high, medium and low risks, and get a fire risk zone map.
The research finds that the estimation of fire probability in study area is 83.3% similar and fire median loss in study area is 75% similar to the evaluation results by firemen based on their daily experiences.
The result of this research can be applied to local hazard mitigation planning, urban renewal projects, hazard preparedness and response for daily practice of fire protection.