Browsing by Author "Haanpää, Susanna"

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the accessibility of fire stations in Finland and to examine, which locations are the most optimal for new fire stations. The thesis also investigates whether current fire stations are optimally located. The research area is wide, as it comprises all rescue departments (22) in Finland. Therefore, the research area is divided in 22 sections that are formed from current rescue departments, so that the analyses are easier to do. The ongoing national rescue service reform is an excellent opportunity to improve rescue services. Based on the analysis, it is possible to examine how equivalent the rescue services are in Finland at present. The key methods used in this thesis are various spatial data analyses, performed with ArcGIS. ArcGIS is an excellent software for accessibility and location-allocation analysis and also for visualizing the results. The results are shown in maps. The accessibility analyses are performed with ArcGIS Network Analysis extension's Service Area tool. Finland is divided into 1 km x 1 km squares which are given a risk class based on the risk level determined by the regression model. Each risk class should be reached within specified time. The accessibility of fire stations is determined by how consistently the risk classes are reached within a specified time. Location-allocation analyses are performed with ArcGIS Network Analysis extension's Maximal Coverage tool. The analyses indicate that the accessibility of the rescue services with current fire stations is mostly good. However, there are still some risk classes that are not reached within the target time and these areas should be taken into consideration when improving the rescue services. The location-allocation analyses indicate that although most existing fire stations are optimally located, some fire stations could improve their accessibility with optimal siting. This would bring these fire stations to closer equivalency with the rest of rescue services in Finland.