Fire Risk Assessments of Informal Settlements Based on Fire Risk Index and Bayesian Network

Jun Hu; Xuecai Xie; Xueming Shu; Shifei Shen; Xiaoyong Ni; Lei Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph192315689

Fire Risk Assessments of Informal Settlements Based on Fire Risk Index and Bayesian Network

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Nov 25;19(23):15689. doi: 10.3390/ijerph192315689.

Authors

Jun Hu^{1

2}, Xuecai Xie^{3

4}, Xueming Shu^{3

4}, Shifei Shen^{3

4}, Xiaoyong Ni^{1

2}, Lei Zhang^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ School of National Safety and Emergency Management, Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai, Zhuhai 519087, China.
² Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Ministry of Emergency Management & Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.
³ Department of Engineering Physics, Institute of Public Safety Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
⁴ Beijing Key Laboratory of City Integrated Emergency Response Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.

Abstract

The specific risk assessment of informal settlements (IS) is important for the management of IS and protection of environmental safety and public health. In this paper, we introduced the different types of IS in China, and conducted the fire risk assessment on 26 burning buildings in these IS, providing a semi-quantitative and scenario fire risk perception of IS in China for the readers. Two methods, the risk index and the Bayesian network, are proposed and adopted for the fire risk assessment in IS. First, a risk index system with a total of 69 factors is used to assess the degree of fire risk of buildings in IS semi-quantitatively, and the result shows that fire equipment and fire safety management on IS are seriously lacking. Then, a Bayesian network of building fire risk with a total of 66 nodes was established to assess the fire risk from ignition to spread as well as the safety evacuation. Overall, the possibility of ignition is high, but due to the role of fire equipment and fire protection design, the possibilities of fire from ignition to spread is gradually reduced. Finally, we also put forward some feasible suggestions for occupants in IS, community organizations and emergency managers to reduce the fire risk from the aspects of fire equipment and fire safety management.

Keywords: Bayesian network; fire risk; informal settlements; risk index.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Bayes Theorem
China
Risk Assessment
Safety Management*

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No:2020YFC0833402) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No:72204139). The authors are grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers for their suggestions in improving the quality of the paper.