Currently, firefighter drones in Republic of Korea underperform due to the lack of take-off site reservations in advance. In order to address this issue, this study proposes a GIS-based multi-criteria model for selecting take-off and landing sites for firefighter drones in urban areas. Seven criteria were set for the selection of take-off and landing sites based on building roofs. Buildings at 318 sites in the target area that satisfy all seven criteria were extracted and grouped according to the geographical location. Among the grouped buildings, 11 sites were reselected through network analysis and central feature methods. In addition, two more sites were selected through the relaxation of criteria for take-off and landing sites for firefighter drones. Validation was performed using the data of building fires that occurred in the target area in the past. The results confirmed the effectiveness of the method applied in this study, as potential responses could be verified for ≥95% of the buildings with a past fire incidence. By introducing a simple methodology in which a multi-criteria model is built through spatial information, this study contributes to the literature on improving operational firefighting strategies and provides practitioners and policymakers with valuable insights to support decision-making.

Disasters have been a major subject of research considering damages caused in terms of losses of lives and properties and the functionality of critical services in cities. Floods generate large amounts of waste, causing several functional deteriorations, such as disrupted transportation, water supply, and wastewater management. Hence, it is necessary to establish an effective plan to secure urban resilience during the disaster response and recovery phases. This study proposes a method to reduce overlaps between disaster waste transportation routes and other emergency response activities after floods in the response and recovery phases. The network analysis of a geographic information system was used to analyze the supplying routes of evacuation, rescue/aid, hospital transportation, and police services for each disaster phase to reduce the overlapping of routes. The results showed that by using the proposed method, the average length of the disaster waste transportation routes increased by 25.29% and 9.80% in the response and recovery phases, respectively, whereas the length of the sections overlapping with the routes providing critical services decreased by 47.49% and 55.57% in the response and recovery phases, respectively. We believe that the proposed method identifies new corresponding key issues to establish disaster waste management plans to secure urban resilience after a disaster.