Research Of Suitability Assessment Of Urban Emergency Shelters Based On GIS

Accompanying the quickened progress of the modernized construction of Chinese cities is the increasingly worsening threats from disastrous events. Although a series of measures have been used in urban planning and construction to reinforce the anti-seismic performance of buildings and structures to protect state's assets and residents'personal safety, the integral anti-seismic and disaster-resisting capacity of cities is far behind the development of urban modernization. Moreover, this gap is enlarging. Analyses on the frequent earthquakes occurring in cities recently has gradually made us know that an urgent task for China's cities to resist disasters and reduce losses is to build emergency shelters. Emergency shelters are some places in cities to provide residents with safe residence, life necessities, succor and command etc. in case of disastrous accidents.Currently a great number of emergency shelters have been constructed home and abroad. Most of them are grass lots and parks in cities. They played an important role on cases of earthquakes and other disasters. There are a variety of urban disasters, such as natural disasters including earthquake, flood, and typhoon etc. Different disasters put different demand on emergency shelters in cities. Therefore, emergency shelters existing or under planning in cities shall undergo assessment on their appropriateness to different disasters.Based on basic geographic data and various special databases of a city, this paper selected and analyzed indices for the assessment on the suitability of emergency shelters, established index system for appropriateness assessment, probed into measures for appropriateness assessment, and made appropriateness assessment on emergency shelters using gray correlation method and entropy method. Constructive advices were presented to planners for planning emergency shelters in cities and amending the deficiencies within the existing approach for emergency shelter planning in cities. The purpose is to secure the proper functioning of emergency shelters on cases of disasters.In this paper, an analysis into the results from the appropriateness assessment on 14 emergency (earthquake) shelters of Shenzhen City discovered that during the planning and construction of emergency shelters, planners should consider whether emergency shelters are able to perform their pertinent functions on cases of disasters in addition to an consideration on the functions and locations of emergency shelters.