Large-scale Vulnerability and Fire Risk Assessment of the Historic Centre of Quito, Ecuador

ABSTRACT

Risk mitigation is assumed today as a top priority in the international agenda. Recent natural disasters raised the awareness of governments and scientists and have let to the search for more efficient and effective strategies to manage and mitigate risk. Such efforts are especially important in the case of large historic centres, which, by often combining a high heritage value with a high level of physical vulnerability, are particularly sensitive and relevant. Considering the abovementioned, the present work aims at presenting and discussing the fire risk in the Historic Centre of Quito, one of the oldest and most important Spanish colonial settlements in South America. Taking into account the difficulties inherent to the scale of the case study, the evaluation is carried out in a neighbourhood scale, through the application of simplified fire vulnerability and risk assessment methodology. In order to perform the spatial analysis of the outputs, vulnerability and risk indicators are integrated into a Geographical Information System tool and the results are presented in the form of vulnerability maps. In a second-order analysis, these maps are subsequently combined with pre-existing vulnerability data in order to identify targets and priorities in terms of risk mitigation strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Fire risk
• large-scale assessment
• historic centres
• ARICA method
• risk mitigation

Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the European Commission through the ELARCH project (Ref. 552129-EM-1-2014-1-IT-ERAMUNDUS-EMA2) and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the postdoctoral grant SFRH/BPD/122598/2016. The authors would like to acknowledge the City Council of Guimarães for the support and contribution to the development of this work. They also express their gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the European Commission through the ELARCH Project (Ref. 552129‑EM‑1‑2014‑1‑IT‑ERAMUNDUS‑EMA2) and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through the postdoctoral grant SFRH/BPD/122598/2016.