System Criticality of Road Network Areas for Emergency Management Services—Spatial Assessment Using a Tessellation Approach

Emergency management services, such as firefighting, rescue teams and ambulances, are all heavily reliant on road networks. However, even for highly industrialised countries such as Germany, and even for large cities, spatial planning tools are lacking for road network interruptions of emergency services. Moreover, dependencies of emergency management expand not only on roads but on many other systemic interrelations, such as blockages of bridges. The first challenge this paper addresses is the development of a novel assessment that captures systemic interrelations of critical services and their dependencies explicitly designed to the needs of the emergency services. This aligns with a second challenge: capturing system nodes and areas around road networks and their geographical interrelation. System nodes, road links and city areas are integrated into a spatial grid of tessellated hexagons (also referred to as tiles) with geographical information systems. The hexagonal grid is designed to provide a simple map visualisation for emergency planners and fire brigades. Travel time planning is then optimised for accessing city areas in need by weighing impaired areas of past events based on operational incidents. The model is developed and tested with official incident data for the city of Cologne, Germany, and will help emergency managers to better device planning of resources based on this novel identification method of critical areas.

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