Advances in Decision Support for Urban Fire Risk Management and Policy Formulation

Dear Colleagues,

Urban fire disasters—ranging from residential structure fires to catastrophic high-rise and mixed-use building incidents—pose escalating threats to life, property, and the resilience of densely populated communities. As cities grow vertically and spatially, fire risks become increasingly complex, demanding evidence-based, data-driven approaches to fire prevention, emergency response, and regulatory governance. This Special Issue, “Advances in Decision Support for Urban Fire Risk Management and Policy Formulation”, focuses explicitly on fire challenges within urban and built environments, aiming to strengthen the interface between cutting-edge research and operational decision-making in municipal fire services, urban planning, fire management and public safety policy.

We seek original, interdisciplinary contributions that develop or apply decision support systems, analytical frameworks, and actionable tools to address urban-specific fire management issues. Topics of interest include—but are not limited to—the following:

• The spatial and temporal modeling of urban fire risk at neighborhood or city scales;
• The accessibility and equity analysis of fire emergency response;
• The optimization of fire station siting and resource allocation;
• Behavioral insights into public fire safety awareness, evacuation compliance, and community preparedness;
• Governance innovations and regulatory frameworks for high-rise, informal settlements, and aging infrastructure;
• Machine learning, agent-based modeling, or big data analytics for urban fire scenario simulation and policy evaluation.

All manuscripts must clearly articulate how their findings translate into concrete implications for fire management practice or policy development. Empirical rigor, methodological innovation, and real-world applicability are key evaluation criteria.

Dr. Dingli Liu
Prof. Dr. Zhisheng Xu
Prof. Dr. Jinghong Wang
Dr. Zongjia Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Fire is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• fire risk assessment
• emergency response accessibility
• fire resource allocation
• fire station location optimization
• fire management policy
• urban fire safety
• high-rise building fire protection
• public fire safety literacy
• decision support systems
• spatial analysis and modeling