Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

Kyoto Sanneizaka district is a traditional wooden area. As they are wooden, built in Japanese traditional manner, and built close together, they are inevitably vulnerable to fire. Thus, it is important to explore effective countermeasures against fire spread. Kyoto city disclosed a report on ‘the Disaster Prevention Project for Sanneizaka Important Preservation District for Groups of Important Historic Buildings’. In the plan, they try to maintain fire safety through effectively functioning fire fighting organizations mainly consisting of community residents. The authors assessed performance of fire fighting activities by community residents through fire risk analysis using Monte Carlo simulation with physics-based model for urban fire spread. Fire risk assessment was carried out for two different assumed conditions at which fire fighting activities were / were not considered. The results show apparent effect of fire fighting activity on suppressing the spread of fires.