With the rapid development of urbanization in China, the gap between urban and rural areas is decreasing. The traditional approach of constructing fire stations based on urban built-up areas is no longer suitable for the needs of modern fire rescue. Therefore, a comprehensive fire station location model is proposed based on fire risk assessment. This method divides the protected area units based on the urban road network. By evaluating different regions based on spatial position, land attributes, population density, floor area ratio, and fire incident indicators, the fire rescue risk levels and categorize regions into four risk levels are assessed. Corresponding response times were determined, and an objective model was developed to maximize the coverage area for fire response. The Baidu API was utilized to accurately calculate driving distances and times, and Gurobi optimization software was used to solve the model. Taking Shanghai as an example, the fire station location and layout from two perspectives—re-planning based on overall station placement and re-planning based on existing stations—were analyzed. The results suggest that constructing around 150 fire stations in Shanghai would effectively meet the fire rescue needs, which aligns with the actual situation in Shanghai and demonstrates the strong applicability of this model. This approach enables the meeting of new demand for fire station construction due to the significant increase in the coverage area while effectively utilizing firefighting resources.

To improve our understanding of flaming, smoldering, or self-extinction in the burning of wood, it is necessary to quantify the conditions that lead to self-extinguished and self-sustained smoldering combustion. Experiments were performed in a cone calorimeter under an external irradiation of 10 to 25 kW/m² to analyze the temperature and mass loss of self-extinguished and self-sustained smoldering. The smoldering front depth was the significant parameter used to capture the smoldering characteristic, and it was defined as the axial thickness that reaches the smoldering characteristic temperature. The critical smoldering front depth of self-extinguished smoldering was lower than 10–15 mm for 30 mm thick wood at 15.5 kW/m² irradiation. This critical depth decreased with the increase in heat flux, from 26.5 ± 1.5 mm at 10 kW/m² to 11 ± 1 mm at 25 kW/m². A simple theoretical analysis is proposed to explain the smoldering thickness threshold of self-sustained smoldering propagation based on the local heat balance. The equation predicts that the critical depth decreases as the heat flux increases, from 23.9 mm at 8 kW/m² to 7.3 mm at 25 kW/m². The predicted critical depth and heating duration were consistent with the experimental results. This study proposes a feasible parameter to help understand the threshold of smoldering propagation and the development of biomass burners.