Shelter planning based on self-saving concepts in urban residential districts

Abstract

With increasing population density in Asia, the potential higher risk was resulted from the residential districts with the higher plot ratio, especially in some megapolis (eg. Beijing and Shanghai). Presently it is more difficult for the rescue operation during the disasters because of the decreasing safe space among the buildings as a result of higher buildings and denser the district. Thus, an immediate self-saving action is more important than before during the disaster in the residential districts, and its realization depends on the reasonable shelter planning and its management system. In this study, the factors related to the self-saving were analyzed and concluded by the related the literatures retrieval and case study, and the case study was done by the in-depth interview and questionnaires in three different residential districts in Shanghai. It was found that the following factors related to the self-saving should be considered in the shelters planning: the distribution of the shelters including their space accessibility and area, evacuation passageways, the facilities of the disaster prevention (such as fire hydrant and guide signs) and subsidiary facilities (such as vegetation for the disaster prevention), the social cohesion, awareness of the self-saving and disaster prevention. Simultaneously, the shelters planning countermeasures based on the self-saving were proposed, which provided some theoretical bases for the study and plan of the security residential districts in future.