GEOSPATIAL ASSESSMENT OF URBAN FIRE HAZARD IN LOKOJA, KOGI STATE, NIGERIA

Abstract

Fire, with its sudden occurrence and destructive character, causes property losses, deaths, and injury in both urban and rural areas. This research employed the techniques of remote sensing and GIS for better understanding of the spatio – temporal trend of fire outbreaks with a view to minimizing fire incidence in urban centres in Nigeria. The topographic map and the district map of the study area were scanned and imported to ArcGIS 10.4 Software environment for georeferencing and digitizing. The addresses of all fire incident locations obtained from Kogi State Fire Service Agency were geocoded and populated in the attribute table. The Average nearest neighbour analysis tool in ArcGIS 10.4 Software was used to determine the spatial distribution of the fire incidents from 2012 to 2016. To analyze the causes of fire incidents in the study area, the data from the Kogi State Fire Service Agency was used and copies of structured questionnaire were distributed across the study area. The data obtained through the questionnaire was analyzed by using excel sheet and ArcGIS 10.4 Software. Road and building layers were extracted from the IKONOS Satellite image. To achieve the most suitable locations for fire service stations, the following parameters were used: Distance from existing fire service stations, Proximity to the main road, Building Density, Proximity to petrol and gas stations, and Fire history data from the Kogi State Fire Service Agency. The result from the Average Nearest Neighbour (ANN) analysis revealed that 2015 exhibited a random pattern while the remaining four years exhibited a clustered pattern of distribution. For five years, there was 143 fire incidence in the study area, 22 cases of fire incidence representing 15.38% occurred in 2012, 36 cases representing 25.17% in 2013, 31 cases in 2014 representing 21.69%. 26 cases in 2015 representing 18.18% and 28 cases in 2016 representing 19.58%. There were four (4) existing fire service stations and the result of the analysis suggested suitable locations for more fire service stations in the study area.