Dynamic estimation of the fire service spatial accessibility for EV charging stations: Towards preventing severe fires and explosions

In recent years, frequent fires and explosions have occurred at electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. Previous studies primarily focused on enhancing the resistance of charging facilities and batteries to such incidents. However, research on improving the spatial accessibility of external fire services for these stations remains limited. Notably, the accessibility of fire services varies significantly under different traffic conditions. To address this gap, this study built a dynamic evaluation method for assessing the spatial accessibility of fire services, incorporating real-time traffic data. This study identified 50 fire stations as fire service supply points and 856 charging stations as demand points in Changsha, China. By leveraging the web map's application programming interface (API) to extract traffic information, real-time travel time for fire services were calculated. Over seven consecutive days, 197 estimation scenarios and obtained 168,632 valid samples were established. The results reveal that the effective coverage rate of fire services for charging stations in Changsha is 15.88 %, indicating a need for improvement in spatial accessibility. The findings provide implications for the optimal allocation and scientific deployment of fire rescue resources. © 2025 The Institution of Chemical Engineers