Service Area Delimitation of Fire Stations with Fire Risk Analysis: Implementation and Case Study

Area of Science:

• Urban planning
• Emergency management
• Geographic information systems

Background:

• Urbanization increases demand for effective fire services.
• Traditional fire service area delimitation methods neglect street networks and varying fire risks.
• Optimizing rescue efficiency and load balancing is crucial for fire emergency facilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel constrained Voronoi diagram for fire service area delimitation.
• To incorporate street network data and historical fire incident data into spatial partitioning.
• To enhance fire station response times and coverage within the critical "Golden 5 min" timeframe.

Main Methods:

• Developed a constrained Voronoi diagram model integrating street network constraints.
• Utilized historical fire incident data to inform risk assessment and service area planning.
• Implemented a network partitioning algorithm to optimize station coverage and response efficiency.
• Conducted a case study in Nanjing, China, to validate the proposed methodology.

Main Results:

• The constrained Voronoi diagram effectively models real-world travel constraints imposed by street networks.
• The proposed method demonstrated an increase in the five-minute response coverage for fire stations.
• The case study confirmed the practicability of the approach for dynamic service area delimitation.

Conclusions:

• The novel constrained Voronoi diagram offers a more realistic and efficient approach to fire service area delimitation.
• Integrating street networks and fire incident data significantly improves upon traditional methods.
• The method provides a valuable tool for urban planners and emergency managers to optimize fire response capabilities.