ASSESSING FIRE VULNERABILITY OF KHULNA CITY

Abstract

An accelerated wave of urbanization with rapid population growth is constantly changing the urban fabric of Khulna city, Bangladesh. This unrestricted growth amalgamated with urban disasters is amplifying vulnerability of urbanites to various hazardous incidents like a fire hazard, waterlogging and earthquake. In recent times fire hazard has become one of the predominant planning issues for city-dwellers, and city development and management authorities alike of Khulna city. This paper attempts to assess the spatial variation of fire vulnerability and explore root causes behind fi re hazard of Khulna city through an index-based approach. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is adopted for developing index which weights 5 categories and 11 sub-categories of factors responsible for fire hazard or the city. Three reverend experts are interviewed for deciding weights in the AHP process. Geographic Information System (GIS) is used for extracting required variables from a digitized physical feature and land-use maps of the city and also for mapping the spatial variation of fire vulnerability across the city. Findings of the research suggest that fire vulnerability of 31 wards of Khulna city can be categorized into three levels. viz. high, moderate and low. In Khulna city, 2 wards are found to be highly vulnerable with vulnerability score ranging from 0.49 to 0.60, 18 wards are found to be moderately vulnerable with vulnerability score ranging from 0.37 to 0.48 and 11 wards are identified to be low vulnerable with vulnerability score ranging from 0.24 to 0.36. From this assessment root causes of fire vulnerability across the city are also identified. Among all factors, land use, building density, building types, and population density are found to be most influential factors for spatial variation of fire vulnerability across Khulna city.