Citation

Noori S, Mohammadi A, Miguel Ferreira T, Ghaffari Gilandeh A, Mirahmadzadeh Ardabili SJ. Fire (Basel) 2023; 6(3): e107.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publications Institute)

DOI

10.3390/fire6030107

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Identifying the regions with urban vulnerability to potential fire hazards is crucial for designing effective risk mitigation and fire prevention strategies. The present study aims to identify urban areas at risk of fire using 19 evaluation factors across economic, social, and built environment-infrastructure, and prior fire rates dimensions. The methods for "multi-criteria decision making" (MCDM) include the Analytic Hierarchy Process for determining the criteria's importance and weight of the criteria. To demonstrate the applicability of this approach, an urban vulnerability index map of Ardabil city in Iran was created using the Fuzzy-VIKOR approach in a Geographic Information System (GIS). According to the findings, about 9.37 km2 (31%) of the city, involving roughly 179,000 people, presents a high or very high level of risk. Together with some neighbourhoods with low socioeconomic and environmental conditions, the city centre is the area where the level of risk is more significant. These findings are potentially very meaningful for decision-makers and authorities, providing information that can be used to support decision-making and the implementation of fire risk mitigation strategies in Ardabil city. The results of this research can be used to improve policy, allocate resources, and renew urban areas, including the reconstruction of old, worn-out, and low-income urban areas.

Language: en

Keywords

city; GIS-MCDM; mapping; risk analysis; structural fire risk; urban vulnerability index