Organised by the Centre for Urban Sustainability and Resilience within the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering of University College London (UCL), FIRE AID’s Deputy Chair Emma MacLennan spoke at a specialist workshop on ‘Improved Data for Fire Risk Management in Urban Informal Settlements’.

Organised by the Centre for Urban Sustainability and Resilience within the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering of University College London (UCL), FIRE AID’s Deputy Chair Emma MacLennan spoke at a specialist workshop on ‘Improved Data for Fire Risk Management in Urban Informal Settlements’.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that fires cause 265,000 deaths each year and are the fourth largest cause of injury globally.  Fires are a significant hazard in urban informal settlements (slums) in middle- and low-income countries.  Most are small-scale, localised events, but cumulatively they cause considerable damage to property and livelihoods.   High-income countries have made considerable progress in reducing fire impacts.  However, there has been relatively little improvement in lower-income countries.  One of the main reasons for ineffective fire risk management strategies in these countries is the lack of sufficient high-quality data on fire incidence, impacts and causes.  There are few good case studies.  Localised datasets exist, but are rare; larger datasets are incomplete and inconsistent.  Resource-poor governments and local institutions lack the capacity to collect information. 

With this in mind, UCL convened a two-day expert workshop on 24-25 May 2016 for some 20 specialists to explore  fire data collection methods and issues. The event combined talks by expert speakers along with a fire data demonstration and hands-on sessions. FIRE AID Deputy Chair and EASST Director Emma MacLennan spoke about data from a road safety perspective – providing a global time line, examples of road crash data collection and practices, and comparing the methods and challenges to fire data collection.  

Recent advances in data creation and collection, particularly geospatial data, offer opportunities to radically improve understanding of urban fires, response and risk management strategies.  Mobile internet technologies, social media, other online tools (e.g. OpenStreetMap) and citizen science approaches have enabled crowdsourcing of data in emergencies and disasters, with some dedicated platforms created to facilitate this.  Automated fire monitoring/warning devices are being tested.  At the same time, more traditional participatory risk/vulnerability assessment tools, which are widely used in lower-income countries, can potentially be adapted and improved to identify and assess fire risks.

The workshop brought together experts in:  geospatial analysis, fire/disaster data collection and management, mobile data collection/application development, participatory risk/vulnerability assessment, citizen science, fire engineering and fire risk assessment and management.