Outdoor fire station

What is a fire station service area?

The former refers to the ease of reaching the place where an emergency occurs; the latter relates to the service area of a fire station, usually defined by the maximum distance (e.g. 2 or 3 km) or travel time (e.g. 4 or 5 min) from the station to an incident.

What are two aspects of fire station location?

Of interest in this research are two aspects of fire station location: access and service coverage.

Should fire stations be closed or relocated?

For example, as suggested by Fig. 5, although most of the existing fire stations are located in the urban core, access and coverage can be greatly enhanced if some existing stations are closed or relocated in order to account for the changing urban landscape and population distribution.

How many fire stations are there in the city center?

In all the three cases (Fig. 5 (a)– (c)), there are four stations in the city center, where the higher fire risk is, to be closed or relocated to other locations indicated by red triangles. Given the spatial distribution of existing stations, the new stations are largely in the south and the east along the boundary of the study area.

What factors affect fire station location?

Among various factors relevant to fire station location, access and service coverage are prioritized here. In the proposed model, the former is represented by travel distance weighted by potential fire risks, and the latter is defined by a service standard.

Is there a bi-objective model for fire station location optimization in cities?

This paper proposed a bi-objective model for fire station location optimization in cities. The proposed approach considers service coverage and accessibility, as well as the impact of existing stations. Pareto-optimal solutions were derived for the proposed problem. The developed model was applied in an empirical study in Nanjing, China.