Decision Support System of Fire Station Distribution and Responsible Area Zoning in Nanjing, China

This paper, from a theoretical perspective, to study Fire Station Distribution and Responsible Area Zoning, found that optimizing standard was fire protection response time. Using this standard, the author constructed an Optimizing Mathematic model to convert response time problem to vehicular speed of Fire Engine. Based on principles of Transportation Accessibility and Road System Reliability, this paper chose thirteen factors from three perspectives (including the urban road structure and its ability of impedance, urban land use and population density) in Nanjing downtown area. Using analysis method of multi-factors weighted-overlay and GIS software, this paper evaluated vehicular speed on the road, the intersection and urban land in different periods. Then the author constructed an Decision Support System of Fire Station Distribution and Responsible Area Zoning during the Traffic Peak Period of Nanjing based on analysis of Time Cost-weighted Distance. Results indicated that current distribution of Fire Station was not suitable and the average fire control response time was about 14 minutes, far exceeding the national standards of 5 min. Through Decision Support System, the author planned 14 new fire stations, and together with the 19 reservation fire stations in Nanjing Urban Master Planning, this distribution planning would make the average response time short to 8 minutes, and more than 50% urban area of Nanjing down area can be arrived by the Fire Engine in time(less than 5 minutes), and the average responsible area of these 46 fire stations would be about 6.2 km². This paper was a preliminary research on analyzing Distribution of Fire Station with a raster calculating method that could be a great valuable supplement for studying the Planning of Fire Station Distribution in traditional vector network analysis and it could help the government to make decisions. However, this study had its limitations. Future study needs to focus on factor choosing and speed calculating.