Literature Review on Suitability Evaluation and Shelter Design of Existing Buildings as Disaster Prevention Shelters

Huan  Liu; Danxiang  Ma; Xiaona  Liu

doi:10.54691/9nrm1j08

Authors

Huan Liu
Danxiang Ma
Xiaona Liu

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54691/9nrm1j08

Keywords:

Existing buildings; Disaster prevention shelters; Suitability evaluation; Shelter design; Literature review.

Abstract

With the increasing frequency of natural disasters worldwide, the planning and construction of emergency shelters have become critical components of urban disaster prevention and mitigation. Existing buildings repurposed as disaster prevention shelters have gradually attracted academic attention due to their economic efficiency, timeliness, and resource conservation advantages. This paper systematically reviews the research progress on suitability evaluation and design optimization of emergency shelters both domestically and internationally, focusing on four dimensions: shelter construction practices, suitability evaluation indicator systems, evaluation methods, and shelter design optimization. The review reveals that existing evaluation indicators primarily emphasize safety, accessibility, and service capacity, while evaluation methods mainly employ GIS spatial analysis, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), entropy method, and their combinations. Design studies predominantly target outdoor open spaces, whereas systematic research on indoor shelter conversion of existing buildings remains relatively weak, and a comprehensive evaluation and design framework covering building performance, facility adaptability, and spatial conversion has yet to be established. Finally, this paper identifies the selection of suitability evaluation indicators for existing buildings as shelters, the integration of subjective and objective weighting methods, and the formulation of indoor shelter design guidelines as key future research directions, aiming to provide references for further studies in this field.

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