Abstract: Previous studies on the layout of fire stations predominantly focuses on urban areas, with limited attention given to counties primarily composed of rural regions. In response to the need for optimizing the layout of fire stations in counties, a comprehensive evaluation method for the accessibility of urban and rural fire rescue is proposed in this paper. Considering the differences in fire risks between urban and rural areas, different standards for accessibility classification are established. Fire rescue demand points are identified by integrating fire data and point of interest data, with urban fire stations and township full-time fire stations serving as supply points for fire rescue. The accessibility of fire rescue in the county is then weighted and comprehensively calculated based on the average ratio of fire direct property losses in urban and rural areas. Taking SD County as an example, 16 040 demand points were collected, and the existing 2 urban fire stations and 13 township full-time fire stations were used as supply points. The travel time for fire rescue was simulated based on real-time road conditions from online maps. A total of 29 evaluation scenarios were set within a full working day, each containing 16 040 samples, amounting to 465 160 samples in total. The results indicate that the cumulative proportion of demand points with accessibility levels Ⅰ and Ⅱ is 50.30%, with several areas experiencing excessively long response times. Analysis reveals that this is due to the lack of township full-time fire stations in these regions. Therefore, a proposal is made to construct 8 township full-time fire stations in these areas as an optimization plan. Upon re-evaluation, the cumulative proportion of demand points with accessibility levels Ⅰ and Ⅱ increased by 10.76% to 61.06% after the implementation of the optimization plan. The comprehensive evaluation method for urban and rural fire rescue accessibility proposed in this study can also be applied to the optimization of fire station layouts in other counties.

Key words: county, fire station, accessibility, fire rescue, fire data statistics