Fire Safety of Ethnic Minority Traditional Settlements in Southwest China

As the largest developing country, China has a large number of informal settlements threatened by fire, including shanty towns, urban villages, group rented houses, prefabricated houses and ethnic minority traditional settlements, especially for some ethnic minority traditional settlements in the southwestern region. However, the studies on fire safety of Chinese informal settlements are very limited. This paper aims to obtain deeper insight into the features of these settlements and a detailed understanding of ethnic minority traditional settlement fires. In order to achieve the goal, a comprehensive perspective of the characteristics of such informal settlements, detailed information on 1244 ethnic minority traditional settlements in southwest China was investigated, including ethnic minority grouping, population, structural characteristics of dwellings, construction materials, slope and altitude of settlements. It was found that the stilted building style is the primary structure characteristic accounting for 69.7% of all structures of dwellings; approximately 60% of the settlements use wood as building material; the average slope is 20 degrees which can accelerate the fire spread; and the average altitude is 1136 m which may make fire rescue difficult. Meanwhile, to systematically understand the effect of different fire influencing factors on ethnic minority traditional settlement fires and provide analytical methods for such informal settlement fires, two case studies were conducted using Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis to investigate the important parameters for fire spread behavior in these settlements. It was found that the slope gradient for Wengding village is less than 8.5 degrees; the critical separation distance in Wengding and Shangri-La is greater than 3.3 m; and the primary factors for quick fire spread in the ethnic minority settlements may include non-conforming fire-fighting facilities, close house proximity and extensive combustible building materials.

Automated summary

This paper provides an overview of the current research on fire safety in Chinese informal settlements, with a focus on ethnic minority traditional settlements in the southwestern region. Through investigation of 1244 settlements, the characteristics of these settlements were identified, and important parameters for fire spread behavior were analyzed using Geographic Information System (GIS).