Risk Assessment of Fire Spread Potential for A Densely Built-up Area Using A Simulation Model of Fire Spread and Fire-fighting

Abstract

The authors have developed a simulation system, which has the functions of simulating urban fire spread and fire brigades operation to the fires. This system is basically aimed for the command control by a headquarters of fire stations to quickly produce information on the performance of fire-fighting operation of fire engines against multiple simultaneous post-earthquake fires. In this paper, we conducted risk assessment of post-earthquake fires by using this system for a densely built-up area in some medium-sized city in Kanagawa prefecture. We did case studies of fire risk assessment by changing the conditions of fire-fighting operation such as the number of fire engines, cisterns, and the number of fire ignitions relative to the case with no fire-fighting operation. The result from the case studies shows that there is a very high fire-risk area found in the southeastern part of the city, where the urban planning for improving fire safety is inevitably required in addition to the upgrade of fire-fighting resources such as the number of fire engines and cisterns.