Fire following Earthquake—Reviewing the State-of-the-Art of Modeling

Abstract

Models for estimating the effects of fire following earthquake (FFE) are reviewed, including comparisons of available ignition and spread/suppression models. While researchers have been modeling FFEs for more than 50 years, there has been a notable burst of research since 2000. In particular, borrowing from other fire modeling fields and taking advantage of improved computational power and data, there is a new trend towards physics-based rather than strictly empirical spread models; and towards employing different simulation techniques, such as cellular automata, rather than assuming fires spread in an elliptical shape. Past achievements include identification of the factors affecting FFE, documentation of historical events, and years of FFE model use by practitioners. Opportunities for future advances include continued development of physics-based spread models; better treatment of slope, water and transportation system functionality, and suppression by fire departments; and more validation and sensitivity analyses.

Analysis and Visualization of Seismic Data Using Mutual Information

“…Big earthquakes often manifest by ground shaking and can trigger tsunamis, landslides and volcanic activity. When affecting urban areas, earthquakes usually cause destruction and casualties [1][2][3][4]. Better understanding earthquake behavior can help to delineate pre-disaster policies, saving human lives and mitigating the economic efforts involved in assembling emergency teams, gathering medical and food supplies and rebuilding the affected areas [5][6][7][8].…”

Physics-Based Fire Following Earthquake Simulation Considering Building Seismic Damage

“…Fire spread models have a tendency towards being physics-based rather than strictly empirical [2]. However, only a limited number of fire spread models consider the influence of building seismic damage on fire spread.…”

“…Most of the ignition models [2] use the regression methods to determine the relationship between the ignition rate and seismic intensity measures, based on the statistics of historical FFE events. Generally, the regression models only provide the number of ignited buildings at a given seismic intensity.…”

Post-earthquake ignition vulnerability assessment of Küçükçekmece District

“…The first model was developed by Hamada and consists of a set of equations that estimate urban fire spread using fuel load, wind speed and other factors as its input parameters (Hamada, 1951). After this model was developed, some Japanese scientists continued to study this topic in the 1970s (Horiuchi et al, 1974;Mizuno and Horiuchi, 1976;Mizuno, 1978;Lee et al, 2008).…”

“…This model was first applied in Japan (Scawthorn et al, 1981) and later in California (Scawthorn, 1986). The model was used as a source for the insurance industry and other modeling approaches for a long time (Lee et al, 2008).…”