Investigation of fire-following earthquake risk considering building and regional characteristics

Abstract

After an earthquake, secondary consequences such as fires, tsunamis, and landslides can lead to extensive destruction and casualties. Fire-following earthquake (FFE) risk on a regional level has been estimated to build effective disaster risk management. In particular, the fire risk/spread can be affected by the building and regional characteristics on a target region. This study mainly evaluated FFE risk considering ratio of fire-resistant types as the building characteristics and building density distribution as the regional characteristic. The fire spread results (fire-burned ratio) on the target region was computed using a static analysis-based fire risk assessment method proposed from a previous study. Additionally, the fire risk was estimated and ranked using multiple fire risk parameters with the building and regional characteristics deeply related to the fire spread. The multiple parameters interpreted the complicated relationship of the fire spread between the building and regional characteristics. The fire risk results were utilized to estimate the correlation between the FFE risks and the fire spread-related parameters. The effect of the fire spread-related parameters can be ranked as follows: building density distribution on a region (R2 = 0.338), and ratio of timber structure (R2 = 0.087) and fire-resistant structure (R2 = 0.004). To establish an effective FFE risk management scheme (e.g., fire protection planning), a building density distribution on a target region significantly related to the fire spread needs to be primarily considered.