Fire Hazard In Urban Areas: A Scoping Review To Understand Issues And Opportunities

Cities have been central to the socioeconomic development of regions and nations. The growth of nations has largely been dependent on the development of their cities. With the continuous trends of high population growth and rapid urbanization, the major concentration of people and economic activities has been occurring in urban areas. Urban areas have thus become significantly central for achieving sustainable development. On the other hand, the impacts of disasters have proved detrimental to the pace of urban development and obstruct the path towards sustainability. Unlike natural disasters, the scale at which man-made disasters occur is relatively smaller, but their high frequency has amplified the issue in urban areas. Fire disasters have emerged as a significant threat to urban areas due to their increasing occurrences. The socio-economic costs of fires in urban areas have been significantly high throughout history, yet the subject has received relatively less attention. This review aims to understand the literature on urban fires and identify the recent trends in the subject. This review intends to scope the unattended issue of fires in urban areas from a wider urban perspective rather than looking at it as an isolated, accidental event within the cities. This scoping review thus attempts to identify the gaps in the subject area while proposing possible future research areas and provides a baseline to integrate fires in urban areas in disaster-resilient studies.