Improving Resilience against Urban Fire Hazards through Environmental Design in Dense Urban Areas in Surabaya, Indonesia

How the built environment is designed and built greatly affects its performance in providing livable spaces for its users. Having high population and building density, man-made disasters such as inundation and urban fire remain major threats to Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city. This paper proposes an approach to improve an urban neighborhood's resilience against urban fires using a design matrix to describe the interaction between Lynch's urban design components and Cai and Wang's idea of Safety-based Urban Design. Paying attention to psychological safety, behavioral safety, defense for safety and safety against disaster in the design and planning of a neighborhood's paths, edges, nodes, districts and landmarks can improve disaster preparedness. A good environmental design can lower urban fire vulnerability, support mitigation efforts and increase disaster preparedness, and make a large difference in the response to an emergency situation. However, to improve overall resilience, both anthropogenic and bio-physic aspects that make up the environment must be acknowledged. Awareness against urban fires must be raised as the physical environment is shaped one component at a time.