Urban Infrastructure Resilience to Fire Disaster: An Overview

Fire disasters are a serious threat to the functionality of the built environment, in particular in densely populated urban areas where city infrastructure systems are under strain. Yet, fire safety issues are still mostly considered at the level of individual elements or buildings, disregarding the global risk for systems' functionality. In line with the current efforts toward ensuring more resilient cities, this paper presents an overview of urban infrastructure resilience to fire disaster. The definitions of resilience and the quantitative frameworks established for other hazards such as earthquakes are reviewed. Then, the specificities of structural fire engineering are presented and it is shown how resilience frameworks could be applied to fire hazard. Finally, the paper identifies areas where further research efforts are needed.