Elsevier

Safety Science

Volume 87, August 2016, Pages 243-255
Safety Science

Spatial–temporal human exposure modeling based on land-use at a regional scale in China

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2016.04.016Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The spatial–temporal human exposure model is proposed based on land use patterns.

  • Regional scale correlation between human types and land-use patterns is established.

  • Variance algorithms to disaggregate various human types to the land are constructed.

  • The model is applied to a case study for the potential human exposure in Dalian City.

  • Results can be used for regional vulnerability assessment or risk evaluation.

Abstract

Regional human exposure to the hazard is an important basis of decision support for more efficient and effective emergency management especially pre-event. Due to the diverse locations of human activities and the displacements they induce, the spatial distribution of population is inhomogeneous and strongly time-dependent. Hence, in the present work, land use pattern was introduced to reflect the distribution characteristics of human exposure in hazard affected regions both in daytime and nighttime. Human activities that contribute to spatial distribution variance were considered to establish the correlation between human types and land-use patterns at a regional scale. Furthermore, hypergraph was used to model the regional human exposure in order to benefit the analysis of spatial–temporal distribution characteristics of population, and variance algorithms for disaggregating different styles of human to the regional land were constructed. What’s more, the model was applied to the analysis of potential human exposure in the built district of Dalian City. Results show that a great amount of area and population are beyond moderate exposure levels on urban construction land of Dalian City, and the population potentially exposed significantly increases from nighttime to daytime periods, especially in the zones with diverse human activities. The presented approach in this study can not only be of utmost importance for vulnerability assessment or risk evaluation, but also for regional and environmental planning as well as local development.

Introduction

China is one of the countries which are subject to a variety of disasters frequently. According to the statistics of Ministry of Civil Affairs of China (2015a), nature disaster (such as earthquake, flood, and hurricane) affected population has reached an annual average level of 0.36 billion person-time in recent five years. Besides, accidents in industry, transportation and public health have caused great losses of casualties and property as well, such as explosion and infectious disease.

Though the impacts caused by those disasters have a great difference whether in form, intensity, scope or frequency, the common threat to human life is the most significant risk to be addressed. As human is the major element at risk in regional disaster system, human life is undoubtedly the most important value for emergency response. For many hazards occurrences, especially those above certain intensity, human exposure is arguably the greatest determinant of vulnerability or risk and to some extent will forebode potential casualties. It is well-known that China is the world’s most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion, which makes up approximately one fifth of the world population, while accounts for only 6.44% of the world’s land. Along with a sustained growth of urbanization progress, the populations are increasingly concentrated in metropolitan areas, and due to diverse locations of human activities and the displacements they induce, the spatial distribution of population is inhomogeneous and strongly time-dependent, which have jointly resulted in tremendous difficulties and challenges to protect human life and property from those various hazards. Accurate and reliable information on about regional human exposure particularly in big cities is an urgent demand for vulnerability assessment and risk evaluation so as to derive corresponding emergency response policies: determination of severely affected area, deployment of rescue teams, scheduling of relief supplies and like that. However, it is usually a “black-box” at the early stage once an event occurs, the capability for real-time population distribution mapping is quite limited, typically like the great earthquake in Wenchuan that china have experienced in 2008. According to the analysis of pre-event population distribution at the disaster affected areas, we can establish a base-line situation for human exposure to the hazard as an important basis for decision support to more efficient and effective emergency response.

The present work, therefore, is an attempt to propose a method for the assessment of human potential exposure with data sets that can be prepared ahead of time, which could be employed once a disaster occurs, and contribute to rapid and efficient emergency preparation and response.

Section snippets

Related works

Exposure reflects “who or what is at risk” in the framework of vulnerability assessment or risk evaluation (Adger, 2006, Cutter, 1996, Pelling, 2004). A system, subsystem, or system component is likely to experience harm due to exposure to a hazard (Birkmann, 2007, Turner et al., 2003). From an overall perspective, the exposure of an element characterized by certain vulnerabilities to the hazards is a major factor to cause risk. Therefore in the evaluation of the risk that a certain element

Characteristics of spatial–temporal human exposure

Regional disaster risk evaluation will not be fully characterized without taking into account the exposure of regional human. The distribution and characteristics of the population can define physical exposure of human to hazards (Schelhorn et al., 2014). Human population distribution, which is not only different from region to region, but also daytime to nighttime period in the same region, behaves as a function of both space and time (Bhaduri et al., 2007). Recognition of spatial–temporal

The study area

Dalian is a sub-provincial city in the south of Liaoning Province, People’s Republic of China. It is the southernmost city of Northeast China at the tip of the Liaodong Peninsula. Dalian, who administers 6 districts, 3 county-level cities, and 1 county, is an important economic, trade, port, industrial and tourist city in China. In 2014, the city’s GDP registered a 5.8% increase, reaching RMB 765.56 billion, while per capita GDP hit RMB 109,939 (see Fig. 9).

Since human activities almost take

Conclusion

Regional human exposure is becoming increasingly significant for vulnerability assessment and risk evaluation to hazards. In this paper, we present an approach to model spatial–temporal regional human exposure on basis of land-use. Human types were classified considering the demographic groups as well as the activities discrepancy in different phases of lifecycle. Then we analyzed the distribution characteristics of each group from both dimensions of spatial and temporal, and represented

Acknowledgments

This work is partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71371039 and 71501022).

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