The GIS-based Simulation of Urban Mass Fire Spread

In this paper, urban mass fire-spread would be studied and modeled by the authors. Firstly, the authors analyzed the mechanisms of urban mass fire-spread deeply and then proposed an empirical-and-physical fire-spread model. This model is composed of two sub-models, one is the simplified model of fire development in a single building, and another is the model of inter-building fire-spread. In order to simplify the complicated process of fire-spread in rooms, the former sub-model only judges the building's fire stages, i.e. ignition, flashover, full-development and collapse, and estimates their corresponding physical parameters. According to the mechanisms of inter-building fire-spread, the latter sub-model formulates two main fire-spread ways, i.e. thermal radiation and thermal plume heating, respectively by simplifying and modifying pervious theory-based models. Additionally, it also quantifies the weather conditions which have great effect on inter-building fire-spread. Finally, the authors proposed a GIS-based simulation scheme for urban mass fire-spread and employed it in a specific ignition near to Gaoqiao Hospital after Hansin earthquake (1995, Japan) for fire-spread simulation. From the comparison between the simulated results and real investigation it is proved that the models for urban mass fire-spread have satisfying effectiveness.