A GIS-Based System for Spatial-Temporal Availability Evaluation of the Open Spaces Used as Emergency Shelters: The Case of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
2.1. Emergency Shelter
2.2. Conditions of Canadian Shelters
2.3. Location Evaluation
3. Study Area
4. Methodology
4.1. Data Collection and Pre-Processing
4.2. Emergency Shelters Evaluation
- Criteria of Safety: People must avoid the high-risk places, such as areas at risk of building collapsing and fire. Buildings under high risks of liquefaction, ground amplification, and landslides have a high possibility of collapsing, because of the unstable geological structure [34,35]. Additionally, in Great Victoria, most individual houses are under three floors, and the wood frame structure buildings have less possibility of blocking the roads than the concrete buildings [36,37,38]. Therefore, those buildings higher than three floors and that have liquefication, high ground amplification, or a landslide risk have a high possibility of blocking the roads. The proportion of collapsing buildings within a 500-m buffer was used to evaluate the building collapsing hazard. Because the scope of gas station fire is unpredictable, the numbers of gas stations within the optimum service radius (500-m buffer) were counted to represent the fire hazard possible.
- Criteria of Accessibility: The accessibility condition includes criteria of road accessibility and rescue response speed [23,24]. The roads layer is overlaid on the natural hazard data layer, and the road conditions are divided into high, moderate, and low risks, which are given the weight of 1, 0.5, and 0, respectively. The sum of the road length timing their corresponding weight represents the roads accessibility within the 500-m buffer. Through GIS technology, Euclidean distances from the open space to the nearest fire station and to hospitals were applied to evaluate the rescue responsible speed and rescue accessibility.
- Criteria of Capability: Larger capacity emergency shelters have the advantage of reducing the cost of emergency resources scheduling. The area divided by the 2 square meters per person is the open space capability [14,15]. The capability may be overestimated because the capability evaluation step is simplified and the building debris does not include it. However, in the Great Victoria case study, there is no building inside of open spaces, and under the quick approach and wide-scale research this limitation is acceptable.
- (1)
- The decision matrix can be constituted of xij:
- (2)
- Normalized xij to rij, so that rij is a dimensionless value:
- (3)
- The entropy weight coefficients calculation wj:
- (4)
- Calculate the weighted normalized decision matrix:
- (5)
- Determine the worst alternative and best alternative:
- (6)
- Calculate the distance between the target worst or best alternative value:
- (7)
- Open space evaluation score Si:
4.3. Service Area and Population Distribution Coupling Analysis
- (1)
- The coupling analysis is a quantity analysis that represents how the emergency shelter service area matches the population distribution [30,39]. Given the service area, the buildings in the service area compared with the total building area can represent a coupling degree. The population in the service area can be estimated according to the coupling degree. The opposite of coupling, the high building density functional zoning but without any emergency shelter, is defined as a gaping hole area. The calculation of the gaping hole method is similar to the coupling degree, which is the proportion of the building area in the gaping hole area of the total district building area. Some functional areas are hotspots that attract a large population in some period. Through the spatial join method, the building functions are defined by using POI data: educational buildings (including some art school, interest training organizations, etc.) and working buildings (e.g., office blocks, factories, etc.), business buildings (e.g., shopping mall, individual shop, etc.), recreation buildings (e.g., restaurants, board game bar, museums, antique stores, etc.), and residential buildings (e.g., house, apartment, condo, etc.). Combining the service area and population distribution results, the gaping hole also can be founded. The proportion of the building area in the service area of the total district building area, value c in Formula (5), represents the coupling degree or the proportion of the gaping hole. Next, Formula (6) calculates the population of the service area or of the gaping hole. The formulas are shown below: The estimation of the coupling degree or the proportion of gaping hole in the district:
- (2)
- The number of people in the service area or in the gaping hole area:
5. Results
5.1. The Emergency Shelter Evaluation Score
5.2. Service Area and Day Time Population Coupling
5.3. Service Area and Nighttime Population Coupling
6. Discussion
6.1. Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Emergency Shelters
6.2. Suggestions for Future Planning
- This study shows that in Great Victoria, public open spaces are an available resource for emergency sheltering during post-earthquake self-motivated evacuations. Emergency shelters can make up for shortages in existing shelters, releasing evacuation pressure, and reducing casualties. Furthermore, across the whole western coastal area of Canada it is also possible to apply open spaces as earthquake emergency shelters.
- Although the evaluation scores of the emergency shelters differ, they are all valuable for supporting evacuation. Highly scoring emergency shelters should be retained and developed carefully to take full advantage of them. By fully using these emergency shelters, the cost of evacuation planning can be reduced, consistent with the principle of integrating daily facilities with disaster prevention facilities.
- Residents can use the evacuation conditions map to find the nearest available safe place that can serve as an emergency shelter; they should stay in emergency shelters and wait for future rescue and relocation arrangements. Decision makers should also improve the whole first-time evacuation plan, focusing on high-risk gaping holes and densely populated areas.
- Evacuation plans should reflect population distribution dynamics, distinguishing and considering differences between day and night, weekday, and weekends. Therefore, the population concentrated in different areas, such as offices, industries, schools, etc. (weekdays), recreation places, business, etc. (weekends), and residential (night), are different during different time periods. A population simulation can be introduced to estimate the population dynamics distribution [40]. Planners should pay more attention to this issue in the future.
6.3. Limitations and the Next Improvement
7. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A
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District | Service Area Pop (Coupling Degree) | Gaping Hole Pop (Proportion) |
---|---|---|
Esquimalt | 1215 (6.9%) | 1036 (58.7%) |
Langford | 1154 (3.3%) | 10,743 (63.7%) |
Victoria | 6327 (7.3%) | 66,221 (76.3%) |
Saanich | 8436 (8.1%) | 72,277 (49.4%) |
Colwood | 736 (4.4%) | 10,743 (63.7%) |
Oak Bay | 0 | 7690 (42.5%) |
District | Service Area Pop (Coupling Degree) | Gaping Hole Pop (Proportion) |
---|---|---|
Esquimalt | 12,764 (72.3%) | 0 |
Langford | 827 (2.3%) | 32,871 (93.1%) |
Victoria | 38,882 (44.8%) | 34,629 (39.9%) |
Saanich | 31,927 (30.7%) | 33,430 (32.1%) |
Colwood | 253 (1.5%) | 0 |
Oak Bay | 2243 (12.4%) | 15,543 (81.9%) |
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Yao, Y.; Zhang, Y.; Yao, T.; Wong, K.; Tsou, J.Y.; Zhang, Y. A GIS-Based System for Spatial-Temporal Availability Evaluation of the Open Spaces Used as Emergency Shelters: The Case of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2021, 10, 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10020063
Yao Y, Zhang Y, Yao T, Wong K, Tsou JY, Zhang Y. A GIS-Based System for Spatial-Temporal Availability Evaluation of the Open Spaces Used as Emergency Shelters: The Case of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. 2021; 10(2):63. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10020063
Chicago/Turabian StyleYao, Yibing, Yuyang Zhang, Taoyu Yao, Kapo Wong, Jin Yeu Tsou, and Yuanzhi Zhang. 2021. "A GIS-Based System for Spatial-Temporal Availability Evaluation of the Open Spaces Used as Emergency Shelters: The Case of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada" ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information 10, no. 2: 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10020063
APA StyleYao, Y., Zhang, Y., Yao, T., Wong, K., Tsou, J. Y., & Zhang, Y. (2021). A GIS-Based System for Spatial-Temporal Availability Evaluation of the Open Spaces Used as Emergency Shelters: The Case of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 10(2), 63. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10020063