Risk Assessment and Analysis

Globally, managing wildland fire is increasing in complexity. Satellite Earth Observation (EO) data, specifically active fire ‘hotspot’ data, is often used to inform wildland fire management. This study explores hotspot data usage via web traffic data (‘user counts’) for the FIRMS, GWIS and EFFIS web portals between September 2019 and April 2023.

Background: Firefighter safety is a top priority in wildland fire response and management. Existing explanations emphasise how land management agency initiatives to change organisational culture, usually inspired by fatality incidents, contribute to changes both in formal safety policies and informal safety practices.

Lightning is responsible for the most area annually burned by wildfires in the extratropical region of the Northern Hemisphere. Hence, predicting the occurrence of wildfires requires reliable forecasting of the chance of cloud-to-ground lightning strikes during storms.

Quantitative wildfire risk assessments increasingly are used to prioritize areas for investments in wildfire risk mitigation actions. However, current assessments of wildfire risk derived from fire models built primarily on biophysical data do not account for socioeconomic contexts that influence community vulnerability to wildfire.

As the frequency and intensity of power line-induced wildfires increase due to climate-, human- , and infrastructure-related risk drivers, maintaining power system resilience and reducing environmental impacts become increasingly crucial.

Background

Situational awareness is an essential component of wildland firefighter safety. In the US, crew lookouts provide situational awareness by proxy from ground-level locations with visibility of both fire and crew members.

Aims

Parcel-level risk (PLR) describes how wildfire risk varies from home to home based on characteristics that relate to likely fire behavior, the susceptibility of homes to fire, and the ability of firefighters to safely access properties.

Background

As fire seasons in the Western US intensify and lengthen, fire managers have been grappling with increases in simultaneous, significant incidents that compete for response resources and strain capacity of the current system.

Aims

Research on wildfires and social vulnerability has gained significant importance due to the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires around the world. This study investigates the dynamic changes in social vulnerability to wildfires over a decade in Idaho, USA, utilizing GIS-based tools and a quasi-experimental design.

Arid forests in the American West contend with overly dense stands and a need to reduce fuels and restore more natural fire regimes. Forest restoration efforts include fuel treatments, such as thinning and prescribed burning, that can reduce ground and ladder fuels.