Shelter in the City : A Network Analysis of Accessibility to Civil Defence Shelters in Sundbyberg, Sweden

Sammanfattning

This master’s thesis examines accessibility to civil defence shelters in Sundbyberg municipality, Sweden. The aim is to develop, apply and evaluate a GIS method for analysing shelter accessibility, capacity and potential additional shelter facilities. The study combines registered shelter locations and capacity, residential population data, the street and pedestrian network, as well as building data. Network analysis is used to examine how the existing shelter system corresponds to the current residential population and to identify areas where access to shelters is limited. The results indicate that shelter accessibility in Sundbyberg is uneven and that aggregate figures for shelter places do not fully reflect local accessibility conditions. Several areas remain outside the analysed shelter catchments, and the relationship between shelter capacity and residential population varies across the municipality. Newer development areas are particularly important when assessing the relationship between inherited shelter infrastructure and current population geography. An exploratory analysis of the built environment identifies candidate locations that could be investigated further as potential shelter facilities. Overall, the thesis demonstrates how GIS network analysis can support planning-oriented assessments of civil defence shelter accessibility and provide a basis for spatial prioritisation in civil preparedness planning.