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Exploring the effects of environmental factors, population density and occupancy on fire incidents – a case study of South-West Division of Delhi, India

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Author Affiliations

  • 1Delhi Fire Service and University School of Environment Mgt., Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India
  • 2University School of Environment Management and Centre for Disaster Management Studies, Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India
  • 3Department of Commerce, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University, Delhi, India

Int. Res. J. Environment Sci., Volume 7, Issue (3), Pages 41-48, March,22 (2018)

Abstract

Due to rapid increase in population, the fire and other emergency incidents has increased significantly in Delhi. The number of fatalities and injuries in fire and emergency incidents has been increased by 68% and 53% respectively since 2001. This paper investigates the causal factors for large number of fire incidents and their association with environmental factors like weather conditions, population density and different types of occupancies. Statistical analysis of the study revealed that there is a positive association between day temperature and fire incidents numbers in a day, whereas day humidity has a negative relationship with day fire incidents. Population density is not found to be significantly associated with number of fire occurrences. Fire incidents in low rise private dwellings and apartment houses, under residential occupancy, account for the highest number of incidents i.e. about 38 % of total fire incidents. Approximately more than 50 % fatalities and injuries in fire incidents are found to have occurred in low rise residential occupancy buildings. The timings of fire incidents of about 50 % of total fatalities in these residential occupancy occurred between 00:00 hrs to 06:00 hrs and the number of total injuries of about 35% were between 18:00 hrs to 24:00 hrs.

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