Abstract

Globally, fire causes considerable losses that can be alleviated by taking appropriate precautions facilitated by sophisticated systems supported by information technologies. To eliminate or reduce the destructive effects of fires, fire risk management is a vital element for those who make the decisions (e.g. local governments and municipalities) concerning fire. For this purpose, geographical information systems (GIS) through effective spatial data storage and query can produce dynamic fire maps. In this study, the city center of Trabzon in Turkey was selected as the pilot area for the establishment of a sample fire database based on GIS and as the basis of sample spatial queries in support of fire management. For this pilot application, firstly, the fire records of the city center between the years 2005 to 2008 were examined and analyzed. Secondly, related fire data were imported into a computer environment as a GIS supported database. Later, the data in the database was visualized, analyzed and queried in order to demonstrate the capabilities of the system. Specifically, an analysis of fire hydrant location was carried out, and the related needs were analyzed. Additionally, spatial queries were performed and pixel-based risk maps were produced.

Key words: Trabzon, geographic information systems, urban fires, spatial database.