Although improvements to evacuation systems are urgently required in response to the growing impact of wildfires, few studies have conducted in-depth analyses of wildfire occurrence and spread data along with evacuation cases in Korea. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the problems of wildfire evacuation systems using satellite-based wildfire detection and disaster alert message data. In particular, this study focused on evaluating the spatiotemporal safety (appropriateness of designation) of wildfire evacuation sites. This study was conducted on the March 2025 wildfires in Gyeongbuk, focusing on the Uiseong area. The results indicated that more than half the evacuation guidance issued prior to the emergency alert messages had already directed residents to sites within the wildfire impact zone. Furthermore, only 20 of the 33 evacuation sites (60.6%) remained outside the wildfire impact zone throughout the analysis period. These findings demonstrate that the selection process for evacuation sites lacks sufficient consideration of wildfire spread pathways and highlight the need to develop a system that can predict and incorporate the dynamic spread of wildfires.
Kim et al. (Thu,) studied this question.