Citation

Song WG, Zhang HP, Chen T, Fan WC. Fire Safety J. 2003; 38(5): 453-465.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper presents results of fire distributions in China and Switzerland. The frequency-size (loss) distribution and the rank-size distribution (or Zipf plot) of city fires are plotted to check their fit with a power-law relationship. The results indicate that fire data in both countries have good power-law distributions and the power-law relation is invariant with scale and time, i.e. fires in different places or in different periods will have the same distribution characteristics. Steady power-law distribution corresponds with self-organized criticality (SOC) and is expected to provide practical implications for fire protection.