Fire Risk Assessment of Heritage Villages: A Case Study on Chengkan Village in China

Abstract

Fire risk assessment is important in heritage-village risk management and cultural relics protection. This study aims to establish a fire risk assessment system and model to assess fire safety for heritage villages. Given the complexity and openness of the heritage village system, the nonlinearity of the driving factors, and the dual attributes of residence and tourism, this paper constructs an index system of three aspects: cultural relic value sensitivity, village fire hazard, and evacuation accessibility. Based on ANP and the Bayes algorithm, a hybrid intelligent model is developed, and the index is weighted by combining subjective expert scoring and objective fact statistics. Finally, ArcGIS buffer and network analysis functions are used for grid processing to quantify and evaluate the difference in fire risk distribution in spatial units of heritage villages. We apply this assessment method to Chengkan Village, a national critical cultural relic protection unit. The results reveal that the cluster settlement layout pattern of the ancestral temple buildings plays a decisive role in the fire risk distribution in Chengkan Village; furthermore, the main factors leading to fire risk were analyzed. In Chengkan Village’s core area, the focus of the local government should be on strengthening active fire prevention measures to reduce the probability of fire. In contrast, in the northern and southern areas, it should focus on enhancing passive fire prevention measures to reduce the possibility of significant fires.

Keywords

• heritage village
• fire hazard
• brick–timber structure
• fire assessment