Human factors in the model of urban fire spread in Madrid (Spain) focused on the poor population

A. Cantizano, R. Caro, M. Fernández, P. Ayala

Sustainability Vol. 14, nº. 8, pp. 4486-1 - 4486-13

Summary:

This study aims to highlight the great potential advantages of bringing human and organizational factors (HOF) into the planning for building fire safety in deprived neighbourhoods (whose populations suffer from a lack of safety culture). Physics-based models were used to analyse fire-spread behaviour in a block of the district of Tetuán, located in the centre of Madrid (Spain), in which a high number of substandard dwellings presented a greater fire risk. GIS tools were used to model the real geometry of the buildings. The numerical models introduced more realistic fire load data related to the characteristics of the population living in these dwellings, which is also a parameter that directly affects the probability of ignition, defined as a Poisson distribution. Generally, the results show that vertical fire spread becomes faster for all buildings, which also contributes to increasing the number of affected rooms. The introduction of HOF in these numerical models can help citizens to better understand fire risk in their own dwellings, raising their risk awareness and subsequently improving their resilience to possible fire accidents.

Spanish layman's summary:

Análisis del riesgo de incendio en un barrio de Madrid con condiciones de infravivienda mediante modelos físicos de propagación en los que se han introducido determinados factores humanos (HOF). Se han modelado las geometrías reales de los edificios con herramientas GIS.

English layman's summary:

Fire risk analysis in a Madrid neighbourhood with conditions of substandard housing, using physics-based fire spread models in which certain human factors (HOF) have been introduced. The real geometries of the buildings have been modelled using GIS tools.

Keywords: human and organizational factors; fire spread; GIS; urban fires; deprived population; resilience

JCR Impact Factor and WoS quartile: 3,900 - Q2 (2022); 3,300 - Q2 (2023)

DOI reference: https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084486

Published on paper: April 2022.

Published on-line: April 2022.

Citation:
A. Cantizano, R. Caro, M. Fernández, P. Ayala, Human factors in the model of urban fire spread in Madrid (Spain) focused on the poor population. Sustainability. Vol. 14, nº. 8, pp. 4486-1 - 4486-13, April 2022. [Online: April 2022]