An Approach for the Analysis of the Accessibility of Fire Hydrants in Urban Territories

Abstract

Globally, fire causes considerable losses that can be alleviated by taking appropriate actions facilitated by systems supported by geo-information technologies. This research focuses upon the development of an approach for planning urban infrastructures, and particularly in the accessibility of fire hydrants. Accessibility of fire hydrants’ infrastructure in urban territories is one of the key elements in fire risk management and public safety. The main result of the research is a comprehensive and structured Geographic Information Systems (GISs)-based dataset for the fast and more efficient planning of fire hydrants in urban territories. The proposed framework for data collection and processing was used to determine the distribution of hydrants, location of fire brigade stations and areas and to demonstrate the capabilities of the existing municipal fire extinguishing systems in Vilnius City, Lithuania. Later on, research on fire hydrants’ accessibility, analysis of the location of protected and unprotected urban territories and marking of unprotected buildings, was carried out. The resulting map of unprotected urban territories can be of great benefit for understanding fire risks and offering more effective ways for fire risk management.

Hotspot Analysis of Structure Fires in Urban Agglomeration: A Case of Nagpur City, India

“…Geospatial tools comprising Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) are powerful tools to evaluate the spatial fire distribution patterns integrating the temporal data [16] and are widely adopted as an analysis system for urban infrastructures [17]. The spatial and temporal patterns of structure fires are of interest, integrating the potential dimensions of space and time [15][16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

Improving Service Coverage and Response Times for Three-Wheeled Mobile Fire Units on Pari Island, Indonesia

“…A commonly used GIS technique in fire services is buffering analysis. Raškauskaite and Grigonis ( 17 ) use buffer analysis to estimate service coverages of hydrants in residential areas in Vilnius, Latvia, where approximately 13.5% of buildings in Vilnius City were not covered by hydrants. A similar approach was applied to the residential areas in Pari to reveal the accessibility of MFUs to reach houses based on roadways, hose lengths, and structure locations.…”

Firefighting in Vulnerable Areas Based on the Connection between Fire Hydrants and Fire Brigade

“…This study complements previous studies conducted on the accessibility to fire hydrants. Raškauskait ė and Grigonis [14] analysed accessibility to fire hydrants using the GIS buffer tool; however, the research was limited, and the operational range of actual firefighting activities that involve the use of fire hydrants could not be determined. Therefore, in this study, the range of firefighting activities was determined based on the connection between firefighting vehicles and fire hydrants.…”

“…Regional availability can be considered as the ratio of supply-demand for each demand location within a given threshold, and regional proximity accounts for the spatial interactions between the supply and demand sides [13]. Raškauskait ė and Grigonis [14] analysed the regional proximity and regional availability of fire hydrants using the GIS buffer tool. However, the operation of firefighting vehicles was excluded because road environments were not considered, similar to the study conducted by Wielebski and Medy ńska-Gulij [15].…”