Geospatial extent of a fire department attention. The case of the municipality of Manizales in Colombia

Abstract

The fire stations, as the main axis in the process of protection of people and goods, must guarantee shortest reaction time in the event of an emergency. Therefore, coverage, location and access analysis processes must be carried out to select the most appropriate sector for its implementation. In this research, an analysis is proposed, through territorial accessibility, which allows to evaluate the coverage of fire stations in the city of Manizales in Colombia, through transport infrastructure network, under current operating characteristics, in order to locate areas that have shortcomings in the recommended response times and their relationship with social equity and coverage. Results show that there is an inequality in service coverage; a social strata 1 and 2 (low economic income) have lower percentages of coverage for a minimum response time of six minutes with 7% and 1%, respectively, while that for strata 5 and 6 (high economic income), the percentages of coverage for the same period of time are 28% and 35%, respectively.