ANALYSIS OF ACCESSIBILITY OF FIRE

HYDRANTS IN VILNIUS CITY

Master’s degree Thesis

ISmf-17 group student: Raminta Raškauskaitė

Academic Supervisor: assoc. prof. Vytautas Grigonis
 Aim of the research

To introduce and analyse GIS systems suitability for the fire

risk management of fire hydrants access points.

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 The main objectives of the research

1) To analyse fire risk regulations and policies in Lithuania and EU countries;

2) To analyse fire risk management practice in Lithuania and EU countries;
3) To analyse GIS based practice in fire safety management;
4) To analyse and evaluate various GIS based technologies in fire risk
management;
5) To accumulate and process the data needed to implement and apply this
project methodology;
6) To visualize, analyse, qualify and query the data in the GIS database in
order to demonstrate the capabilities of the system;
7) To analyse and evaluate the experimental part of fire hydrants location in
Lithuania, suggest the related improvements;
8) To compare and summarize experiment results;
9) To present the conclusions and recommendations.
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Review of fire risk management.
Fire statistics

Figure 1 Average number of fire deaths per 100 000

inhabitants (2013-2017) (Brushlinsky et. al, 2018)
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 Review of fire risk management.
GIS Application for Fire Management

Figure 2 Example of GIS layer’s usage in Fire Safety (Mansfield, 2011)

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 Analysis of fire risk management
practice in Lithuania and EU countries

Figure 3 Attribute table of municipal fire hydrants

Figure 4 Berlin fire hydrants map (Fire hydrants, 2019)

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 The experiment of accessibility of
Vilnius fire brigades hydrants

Figure 5 Municipal fire hydrants in Vilnius Fire Brigades Figure 6 Fire hydrants 200 m and Natural water ponds
territory 1000 m accessibility in area of Fire Brigade 1
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 The experiment of accessibility of
Vilnius fire brigades hydrants
Table 1 Information about Vilnius Fire Brigades

Table 2 Areas and quantities of unprotected buildings

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 The experiment of accessibility of
Vilnius fire brigades hydrants

Figure 7 Diagram of analysis with protected and unprotected areas comparison according to GIS data

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 Conclusions

1) Fire Risk Management plan and more open communication shall be

created.
2) Following Germany’s and Austria’s experience it is essential to prepare an
accessible day-to-day database.
3) ArcGIS 10.5 software and database of seven fire brigades which operates
in separate Vilnius town parts were created. Spatial experimental methods
(clip, split, select, spatial join, buffer tools and etc.) were applied in order to
determine problematic zones without possibility to be extinguished with water
in case of fire in 57 014.61 ha Vilnius area.
4) This experiment was the first time of GIS application in the field of
Lithuania’s fire risk management and it could be stated that GIS is convenient
software for evaluation of large quantities of data and could be a useful tool
for sustainable fire risk management and hydrants supervision.

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 Recommendations
• The Fire and Rescue Department must integrate GIS as software for fire
risk management.
• Theoretically identified unprotected areas could be solved by providing
new hydrants installation but hydrant location determination requires more
specific data and information evaluation.
• In order to avoid additional costs and save expenses for future fire
hydrants installation, it is important to create complex GIS system which
could be implemented with other department’s data and could help to
eliminate mistakes and failures.
• Learning from EU countries experience it is recommended to base fire risk
management not only on legal and institutional policies but also on
organisations, agencies, and communities which shall also be involved in
the sustainable development of fire safety.

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ANALYSIS OF ACCESSIBILITY OF FIRE
HYDRANTS IN VILNIUS CITY
Master’s degree Thesis

Thank you for attention!

Time for discussion