Browsing by Author "Rush, David"

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    Fire risk reduction on the margins of an urbanizing world
    (Emerald, 2020-10) Rush, David; Bankoff, Greg; Cooper-Knock, Sarah-Jane; Gibson, Lesley; Hirst, Laura; Jordan, Steve; Spinardi, Graham; Twigg, John; Walls, Richard Shaun
    Purpose: Globally, over 95% of fire related deaths and injuries occur in low- and middle-income countries. Within informal settlements, the risk of fire resulting in injury or death is particularly high. This paper examines fire risks in informal settlements in New Delhi and Cape Town, and tented informal settlements in Lebanon. Design/methodology/approach: Our analysis draws on primary sources, secondary literature, statistical data and qualitative interviews. Findings: The distribution of fire risk across urban societies is a fundamentally political issue. Residential fire risk can be tackled by accessible, affordable, safety-compliant housing. That said, important interim measures can be taken to mitigate fire risk. Some of the risks requiring attention are similar across our case studies, driven by high population densities; flammable housing materials; unreliable or inaccessible access to safe power sources; and – in the case of Cape Town and New Delhi particularly – the inability of fire services to reach sites of fire. However, these common risks are embedded in distinct social, economic and political contexts that must be placed at the center of any intervention. Interventions must also be aware that the risk of fire is not spread evenly within informal settlements, intersecting as it does with factors like gender, age, health and disability. Originality/value: Informal settlement fires have been under-studied to date. The studies that do exist tend to operate within disciplinary silos. This paper represents an important interdisciplinary approach to fire within informal settlements, which grounds technical data, modeling and experiments in political, social and economic realities.
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    Towards the development of a probabilistic approach to informal settlement fire spread using ignition modelling and spatial metrics
    (MDPI, 2020-11-15) Cicione, Antonio; Gibson, Lesley; Wade, Colleen; Spearpoint, Michael; Walls, Richard; Rush, David
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Large conflagrations of informal settlements occur regularly, leaving thousands of people homeless daily and taking tens of thousands of lives annually. Over the past few years, a large amount of data has been collected from a number of full-scale informal settlement fire experiments. This paper uses that data with a semi-probabilistic fire model previously proposed by the authors, to illustrate the potential applications of the fire spread method proposed. The current model is benchmarked against a 20-dwelling full-scale informal settlement fire experiment, and the effects of the (a) ignition criteria, (b) wind direction, and (c) wind speeds on the predicted fire spread rates are investigated through the use of a parametric study. Colour maps of the fire spread rates and patterns are then used to visually interpret the effects of different types of fire scenarios and fire breaks. Finally, the fire spread capability within B-RISK is used to derive a linear equation for the potential fire spread rate as a function of the settlement spatial metrics (e.g., density and distance to nearest neighbour). To further illustrate the potential application of this work, the fire spread rate equation is then applied across the whole of Cape Town, South Africa, to show the 10 informal settlement areas most at “risk” of large conflagrations.