Modeling and Estimating Post-Earthquake Fire Spread

This paper describes the development of a GIS-based dynamic fire-spread model, with seven distinct modes of fire spread: direct contact, spontaneous ignition of claddings, piloted ignition of claddings, spontaneous ignition through windows, piloted ignition through broken windows, fire spread via non-fire-rated roofs and branding. All except the first two modes include in-built probabilities, but these can be selected individually and given user-defined values. Fire spread modes can be added to the model or altered to suit available building information. Critical details of buildings are obtained from an existing-buildings database, street surveys, or deduced using conditional probabilities from available data. Results show that comparison with actual fires is reasonable. The model could be extended with further development for use as a real time firefighting tool. [DOI: 10.1193/1.4000009]