A Novel Approach to Estimate Fuel Energy from Urban Areas

Abstract The rapid growth of urbanization has caused the intertwined relationship between the man-made system and the Earth development more dynamical and complicated. As the main link connecting the urban and environment, fuel energy has always been one of the hop-spots in recent scientific research. This paper proposed a novel method to estimate the mass of fuel load from urban area. The model comprehensively studied the parameter, fire load density (FLD), which is used to account for the total energy released by the surveyed building. A database of FLD was founded to investigate the influence of building type. In order to compile the urban land-use area in orderly manner, this study developed a classification of land-use type such as residential, commercial, business and the other six categories. Then, this paper described the conceptual framework that how to calculate total amount of fuel energy released and mass of various combustible materials in urban area. Additionally, the proposed model was applied in Washington D.C as case study. According to D.C. Zone Planning, the entire D.C. was divided into eight wards, which containing ten district area. The total area of each district was divided into the eight categories of land-use types. Finally, the models presented the mass distributions of various combustible materials in all districts of Washington D.C. Moreover, the differences in the fuel mass per capita among each district demonstrate that the different distribution areas of various land-use type show the significant influence on the fuel mass quantities.