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Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements
Fires cause over 300,000 deaths annually worldwide and leave millions more with permanent injuries: some 95% of these deaths are in low- and middle-income countries. Burn injury risk is strongly associated with low-income and informal (or slum) settlements, which are growing rapidly in an urbanising...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5334693/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28157149 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14020139 |
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author | Twigg, John Christie, Nicola Haworth, James Osuteye, Emmanuel Skarlatidou, Artemis |
author_facet | Twigg, John Christie, Nicola Haworth, James Osuteye, Emmanuel Skarlatidou, Artemis |
author_sort | Twigg, John |
collection | PubMed |
description | Fires cause over 300,000 deaths annually worldwide and leave millions more with permanent injuries: some 95% of these deaths are in low- and middle-income countries. Burn injury risk is strongly associated with low-income and informal (or slum) settlements, which are growing rapidly in an urbanising world. Fire policy and mitigation strategies in poorer countries are constrained by inadequate data on incidence, impacts, and causes, which is mainly due to a lack of capacity and resources for data collection, analysis, and modelling. As a first step towards overcoming such challenges, this project reviewed the literature on the subject to assess the potential of a range of methods and tools for identifying, assessing, and addressing fire risk in low-income and informal settlements; the process was supported by an expert workshop at University College London in May 2016. We suggest that community-based risk and vulnerability assessment methods, which are widely used in disaster risk reduction, could be adapted to urban fire risk assessment, and could be enhanced by advances in crowdsourcing and citizen science for geospatial data creation and collection. To assist urban planners, emergency managers, and community organisations who are working in resource-constrained settings to identify and assess relevant fire risk factors, we also suggest an improved analytical framework based on the Haddon Matrix. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5334693 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-53346932017-03-16 Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements Twigg, John Christie, Nicola Haworth, James Osuteye, Emmanuel Skarlatidou, Artemis Int J Environ Res Public Health Review Fires cause over 300,000 deaths annually worldwide and leave millions more with permanent injuries: some 95% of these deaths are in low- and middle-income countries. Burn injury risk is strongly associated with low-income and informal (or slum) settlements, which are growing rapidly in an urbanising world. Fire policy and mitigation strategies in poorer countries are constrained by inadequate data on incidence, impacts, and causes, which is mainly due to a lack of capacity and resources for data collection, analysis, and modelling. As a first step towards overcoming such challenges, this project reviewed the literature on the subject to assess the potential of a range of methods and tools for identifying, assessing, and addressing fire risk in low-income and informal settlements; the process was supported by an expert workshop at University College London in May 2016. We suggest that community-based risk and vulnerability assessment methods, which are widely used in disaster risk reduction, could be adapted to urban fire risk assessment, and could be enhanced by advances in crowdsourcing and citizen science for geospatial data creation and collection. To assist urban planners, emergency managers, and community organisations who are working in resource-constrained settings to identify and assess relevant fire risk factors, we also suggest an improved analytical framework based on the Haddon Matrix. MDPI 2017-02-01 2017-02 /pmc/articles/PMC5334693/ /pubmed/28157149 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14020139 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Review Twigg, John Christie, Nicola Haworth, James Osuteye, Emmanuel Skarlatidou, Artemis Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements |
title | Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements |
title_full | Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements |
title_fullStr | Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements |
title_full_unstemmed | Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements |
title_short | Improved Methods for Fire Risk Assessment in Low-Income and Informal Settlements |
title_sort | improved methods for fire risk assessment in low-income and informal settlements |
topic | Review |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5334693/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28157149 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14020139 |
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