Comprehensive Examination of the Determinants of Damage to Houses in Two Wildfires in Eastern Australia in 2013

Wildfires continue to destroy houses, but an understanding of the complex mix of risk factors remains elusive. These factors comprise six themes: preparedness actions (including defensible space), response actions (including defence), house construction, landscape fuels, topography and weather. The themes span a range of spatial scales (house to region) and responsible agents (householders through government to entirely natural forces). We conducted a statistical analysis that partitions the contribution of these six themes on wildfire impact to houses, using two fires that destroyed 200 houses in New South Wales (Australia) in October 2013 (the Linksview and Mt York fires). We analysed 85 potential predictor variables using Random Forest modelling. The best predictors of impact were whether the house was defended and distance to forest toward the direction of fire spread. However, predictors from all four of the other themes had some influence, including distance to the nearest other burnt house (indicating house-to-house transmission) and vegetation cover up to 40 m from the house. The worst-placed houses (undefended, without adequate defensible space, with burnt houses nearby and with a westerly aspect) were 10 times more likely to be impacted than the best-placed houses in our study. The results indicate that householders are the agents most able to mitigate risk in the conditions experienced in these fires through both preparation and active defence.

REDESIGNING A NEGATIVE SPACE THROUGH CPTED IN SUSUKINO DISTRICT, SAPPORO, JAPAN

As an impact of prostitution site, criminality is basically triggered by a negative space; however, prostitution site in Japan is a part of the city. Susukino in Sapporo, for example, plays a role as a tourist attraction as well as a prostitution site. This research aims to figure out how the architectural design in Susukino influences criminality prevention as an effect of prostitution site. Survey and interview were conducted to observe zonation in Susukino and to define a negative space as a problem of the district. Later, seven aspects: 1)Defensible space, 2)Territoriality, 3)Surveillance, 4)Lighting, 5)Landscaping, and 6)Physical security; based on CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environment Design) theory were applied as a basis to propose a safe ambiance in the negative space by increasing street connectivity.

Defensible Spaces

Defensible space is the concept of creating spaces that include a series of architectural guidelines that are used when designing a new urban residential area to promote both the territorial claim of the residential groups to their surroundings and their ability to conduct natural surveillance of their spaces. Constructing safe environments with safe vocabularies for enhancing well-being is crucial for achieving quality of life in both peace and wartime. Warzone countries that suffer from many changes due to the effect of war (or fourth-generation wars) should be prepared to face those changes with safe spaces as well.

Factors Associated with Structure Loss in the 2013–2018 California Wildfires

Tens of thousands of structures and hundreds of human lives have been lost in recent fire events throughout California. Given the potential for these types of wildfires to continue, the need to understand why and how structures are being destroyed has taken on a new level of urgency. We compiled and analyzed an extensive dataset of building inspectors’ reports documenting homeowner mitigation practices for more than 40,000 wildfire-exposed structures from 2013–2018. Comparing homes that survived fires to homes that were destroyed, we investigated the role of defensible space distance, defensive actions, and building structural characteristics, statewide and parsed into three broad regions. Overall, structural characteristics explained more of a difference between survived and destroyed structures than defensible space distance. The most consistently important structural characteristics—having enclosed eaves, vent screens, and multi-pane windows—were those that potentially prevented wind-born ember penetration into structures, although multi-pane windows are also known to protect against radiant heat. In the North-Interior part of the state, active firefighting was the most important reason for structure survival. Overall, the deviance explained for any given variable was relatively low, suggesting that other factors need to be accounted for to understand the full spectrum of structure loss contributors. Furthermore, while destroyed homes were preferentially included in the study, many “fire-safe” structures, having > 30 m defensible space or fire-resistant building materials, were destroyed. Thus, while mitigation may play an important role in structure survival, additional strategies should be considered to reduce future structure loss.

Magnetic Places in Riga Soviet Residential Areas

This article focuses on magnetic places in Riga Soviet residential areas – locations which are differ from ordinary spaces due to their naturalness, possibility of restoration, perceived beauty and possibility to appropriate such places. This paper utilises two theoretical fields – the one of evolutionary aesthetics in dealing with such elements as prospects and refuges that is crucial for survival, but also phenomenology dealing with mental maps and subjective perception of space. The method in use is semi-structured interviews, since they provide a valuable in situ material for proving a theoretical thought. It can be concluded that the magnetic places that often are as much as 200 m far from the interviewees’ homes are more attractive than the location outside their window. This finding is in stark contrast to Oscar Newman’s Defensible Space Theory. There are also few recommendations for landscape architects included in this text: one of those is to not only invest more resources into the design of magnetic places, but carefully design the ordinary places. The latter should be done not only in order to avoid the arousal of no-go areas in a residential complex, but also because any ordinary space has a potential of becoming a place.