Post-earthquake fire risk and loss assessment in urban areas

Abstract

Post-earthquake fire (PEF) poses a significant threat to urban structures and may contribute to the collapse of seismically damaged buildings as well as result in catastrophic human casualties and loss of properties. There is some attention of the researchers to further study the impact of PEF risk in urban buildings and its socio-economical aspects on urban life. However, the nature of such phenomenon has not yet been fully understood in depth and many aspects are still unknown. In this paper, a review of the state-of-the-art of the previous PEF events, PEF risk estimation, fire ignition models and probabilistic loss assessment are presented. This work aims to present the main observations regarding the PEF events in history and give a review of the studies that were developed to better understand the PEF phenomenon. It is also presented some mitigation measures that could be helpful to reduce or prevent post-earthquake fires.