Fire resilience at the urbanising margins
| Fire kills an estimated 150,000-180,000 people per year, 95% of whom live in LMICs 1. In addition to the lives lost, 10 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs) are lost each year, and each year fire costs between 1-2% of global GDP 2. All other natural hazards combined kill an estimated average over 10 years of 70,000 deaths per year and a cost of 0.2% of global GDP 3. Global fire death rates 4 and distribution of informal settlements 5 are well correlated. Given the rapid urbanization that is occurring in Africa and South East Asia, where there are already large numbers of informal settlements, it is only intuitive that the fire deaths will increase. Therefore, there is a pressing need to understand the risks within these settlements. In this event, you will learn the current state-of-the-art knowledge and techniques to understand and map fire spread risks in informal settlements. Using examples from the IRIS-Fire research project in Cape Town, South Africa we will discuss the different social, spatial, and physical fire risks and how this can inform participatory dialogues between communities and municipalities to Improve the Resilience of Informal Settlements to Fire. The session will be interactive looking at spatial arrangements of informal settlements, followed by a panel discussion on the linkages between social, spatial, and physical fire risks. This session will also provide time and space for Q&A discussions with the audience. 1. Rush, D. et al. Fire risk reduction on the margins of an urbanizing world. Glob. Assess. Rep. 2019 1–25 (2019). 2. The Geneva Assocation. Fire and Climate Risk. World Fire Stat. Bull. 1–18 (2014). 3. IFRC. World Disasters Report 2016. Resilience : saving lives today, investing for tomorrow. Disasters (2016). doi:10.1037/e569662006-003 4. UN-Habitat. Our World in data – Cause of death. (2020). Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/causes-of-death. (Accessed: 21st February 2020) 5. UN-Habitat. Our World in Data – Urbanization. (2020). Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/urbanization. (Accessed: 21st February 2020) |
Organizer: School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh
Speakers:
David Rush, Senior Lecturer in Structural Engineering
Dr Lesley Gibson, Geospatial Scientist, University of Edinburgh