Large-scale Vulnerability and Fire Risk Assessment of the Historic Centre of Quito, Ecuador

Risk mitigation is assumed today as a top priority in the international agenda. Recent natural disasters raised the awareness of governments and scientists and have let to the search for more efficient and effective strategies to manage and mitigate risk. Such efforts are especially important in the case of large historic centres, which, by often combining a high heritage value with a high level of physical vulnerability, are particularly sensitive and relevant. Considering the abovementioned, the present work aims at presenting and discussing the fire risk in the Historic Centre of Quito, one of the oldest and most important Spanish colonial settlements in South America. Taking into account the difficulties inherent to the scale of the case study, the evaluation is carried out in a neighbourhood scale, through the application of simplified fire vulnerability and risk assessment methodology. In order to perform the spatial analysis of the outputs, vulnerability and risk indicators are integrated into a Geographical Information System tool and the results are presented in the form of vulnerability maps. In a second-order analysis, these maps are subsequently combined with pre-existing vulnerability data in order to identify targets and priorities in terms of risk mitigation strategies.