Citation

Zhao SJ, Xiong LY, Ren AZ. J. Fire Sci. 2006; 24(4): 313-339.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0734904106060786

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Post-earthquake fire is a dangerous secondary disaster following an earthquake, which causes severe life losses and property destruction. Similar to other natural disasters, fire outbreak following an earthquake carries its own spatial and temporal characters. In order to explore these characters, we analyzed in detail the fires caused by the Hanshin earthquake in Japan (1995). We identified the key spatial-temporal characters of the fire outbreak following an earthquake. Using this analysis methodology, we further collected and organized the records of post-earthquake fires that have occurred in the 20th century in USA, Japan, and China, and modeled fire outbreaks following an earthquake by employing a regression analysis method. Considering the stochastic characters of post-earthquake fires, we proposed a random Poisson event and Weibull distribution model in constructing the spatial-temporal probability distribution of fire outbreaks following an earthquake in urban districts. In addition, we propose a geographical information system (GIS) based stochastic simulation schema to predict the spatial-temporal process of fire outbreaks following future earthquakes. Finally, we applied our models to simulate the fire outbreaks in Xiamen city after an assumed earthquake of a similar magnitude as the Hanshin earthquake. Our simulation result not only exhibits the spatial-temporal characters of fire outbreaks following an earthquake, but also supplies valuable decision-making information to the planning of Xiamen city's seismic prevention and mitigation.

Language: en