Estimating Contingent Values for Protection from Wildland Fire Using a Two-Stage Decision Framework

The Social Value of Mortality Risk Reduction: VSL vs. The Social Welfare Function Approach

The purpose of this research was first to study the Wildland-Urban Interface and Wildland-Urban Intermix (WUI) fire problem, and then to design, develop and implement improved fire assessment and fire protection features for structures in the these interface fire-prone areas. The findings included that several areas of the world are prone to devastating fires that claim lives and destroy property, and their fire problems continue to exacerbate. None of these compare to the property loss experienced in Southern California due to its vast development in fire prone areas. It is because of the continuing huge property loss and frequency of major WUI fires that Southern California was selected as the concentration for research and the case studies used in this paper. However, the results of the research are applicable to other interface fire-prone areas in the world. The author is motivated by a need to dramatically improve our ability to effectively deal with what is no longer a fire “threat,” but the reality that people have chosen to live in an area of the world in which wildland fires are part of natural forest dynamics. To reduce the economic and social impacts of these inevitable fires, we need to understand the causes of fire damage, and establish methods to minimize damage when fires occur. This thesis proposes several fire protection strategies for increased fire resiliency and safety of individuals. Following a search of fire history and analysis, three related fire assessment matrixes were synthesized (see Chapter Five). The Fire Profile Index is the principal fire assessment matrix. It was developed empirically and applied to historical fire spreads for a sense of accuracy. The intended users of the Fire Profile Index are design professionals, public agencies charged with oversight for development in the WUI, insurance agencies, building and landscape contractors, homeowners, potential homeowners, residents and fire service professionals. From the Fire Profile Index two derivative special-use matrixes were established for use by diverse groups. The first of these matrixes, the Developers Guide, is intended for design professionals, public agencies, insurance agencies, and building and landscape contractors. The second matrix is the WUI Fire Assessment Guide, whose intended users are those concerned with development in high fire hazard areas, who should have a fundamental knowledge of fire behavior. This group includes fire agencies, developers, homeowners, potential homeowners and insurance companies. This thesis contributes to increased residential structure fire resistiveness and occupant fire

The increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires are affecting the use of wood products in rural areas as well as at the wildland–urban interface. The enhancement in wood products’ reaction/resistance to fire is a concern often raised by national authorities. In the present study, different fire protection measures were applied to utility wood poles aiming to protect them from wildfires, ensuring their reuse in safe conditions while preventing them from contributing to the propagation of forest fires, particularly surface fires. Two of the solutions tested were based on intumescent paints, while the other one involved a system that completely covers the poles’ exteriors (a fabric-protection layer mechanically applied to the surface of the pole). These solutions were initially assessed in small-scale laboratory tests. Following these initial tests, a selected solution based on fabric protection was tested under simulated wildland fire conditions. The results obtained showed that fabric-based protection delivered satisfactory results, being easily applied on site, allowing the protection of poles already in service and the replacement of fire protection devices after a fire occurs.

Devastating large outdoor fires have been responsible for the destruction of vast amounts of infrastructure and the loss of human life. Wildland fires that spread into urban areas, known as wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires, are capable of enormous destruction. WUI fires are distinct from wildland fires; WUI fires include the combustion of both vegetative and human-made fuels and occur where population centers exist, whereas wildland fires include the combustion of vegetative fuels and occur in uninhabited areas. The rise of densely populated urban areas has also seen the development of large urban fires. In addition, the rise of informal settlement communities in Southeast Asia and Africa continues to result in large outdoor fires capable of great destruction. As a wildland fire reaches an urban area, structure-to-structure fire spread processes will occur via the same mechanisms as those in informal settlement fires and urban fires: radiant heat, direct flame contact, and firebrands. Firebrands are in fact the main culprit to destroy structures in large outdoor fires. An additional complication is related to the showers of firebrands produced in large outdoor fires from vegetative and structural fuel combustion, and in the presence of the combustion of these fuel types, there is also radiant heat produced that may only enhance ignition processes. These combined ignition processes have been overlooked and are the subject of this experimental investigation. To this end, a custom experimental apparatus that produces firebrand showers, in the presence of applied radiant heat, was installed inside a wind facility. The firebrand generator was tuned to produce firebrands typical of those quantified from the combustion of structures and the coupled influences of firebrand showers and radiant heat, under various wind speeds was determined. The total firebrand mass for smoldering ignition (SI) decreased as the wind speed and preheating time increased. In all experiments, SI was observed to transition to flaming ignition (FI). To better understand the experimental observations, a simple model was developed and is presented.

The growth of the cities has contributed to the generation of processes and dynamics linked to the transition between urban and rural-forest ecosystems, thereby enhancing the emergence of Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) spaces (Herrero-Corral, 2012), as well as problems associated with the generation of forest fires; therefore, only focusing in fostering an increase investment on emergency measures may result in more harmful and burdensome fires in the future (Mutch, Lee & Perkins, 1998). In this sense, it is essential to have a comprehensive view on risk and its management-linked to the factors that generate conditions of vulnerability-, so the purpose of this study was to evaluate the performance of Risk Management (RM) during The 2014-2018 period, through its specific application for the city of Valparaíso, Chile and its WUI areas, taking as reference the catastrophic fire of 2014, classified as the largest urban fire in the country's history. To elaborate this evaluation, a methodological approach using indicators to obtain the Risk Management Index (RMI) considering four policy components: risk identification, risk reduction, disaster management and governance and financial protection (risk transfer) was used. The results obtained evidenced the existence of previous risk conditions and a constant increase in vulnerability as a social construction process. In this sense, the performance level of the RM in the city in 2018 is due to an emerging or emerging adaptive response (obtaining an RMI of 2.31 over a maximum value 5), which is closely linked to the underlying factors that generate it, such as the existence and prevalence of irregular settlements and built environments not adapted to the behavior of forest fires, environmental degradation, insufficient or outdated territorial planning, and limited community capacities that do not adequately consider the DRM. Conditions which, in sum, are reflected in the limited policies related to risk reduction and in terms of risk transfer, favoring the recurrence and increase of the effects on the city's WUI.

With recent and predicted increases in the frequency and intensity of wildfires, there is a pressing need for mitigation strategies to reduce the impacts of wildfires on human lives, infrastructure and biodiversity. One strategy involves the use of low-flammability plants to build green firebreaks at the wildland–urban interface. It is common, however, to encounter uncertainty in a diverse range of stakeholders about the concept of flammability as it applies to plants, which may impede efforts to identify suitable low-flammability plant species. Here, we provide an approach to identify low-flammability plant species that integrates three fundamental and relatively easy-to-measure plant-flammability attributes – ignitibility, sustainability and combustibility – in a way that removes confusion about the concept of plant flammability. These three intrinsic flammability attributes relate to each other such that an ideal low-flammability species is one that is slow to ignite, sustains burning for a short period of time and combusts with low intensity. Consideration is then given to secondary attributes of plants critical to the selection of low-flammability plants, including attributes that influence the volume of fuel available for fires and the vertical and horizontal spread of fires. More work is urgently needed across the world to identify low-flammability plant species using standardised measurement protocols, and our integrated approach provides a transparent way to ensure we are selecting the right species, for the right location, in green firebreaks.

This paper through a systematic literature review portrays the academic work that has been done in disaster management by applying multi-criteria decision making. This study reviews 36 academic articles that applied multi-criteria decision-making planning and management of natural disasters i.e. tsunami, floods, heavy rains, earthquake, land sliding, epidemic, pandemic, etc. This study finds out that lack of effective planning and management pre and post disasters is causing loss of human life, temporary migration of locals to safer places, loss of properties, and economic losses. Once the crisis is over, it requires efforts and additional finances to bring life to normal. There are regions where disasters are periodic such as floods in rivers or due to monsoon season. But with effective planning and pre-determined priorities, loss to human life can be mitigated. Disaster management departments need effective planning tools to forecast imminent disasters and prepare accordingly. This study is very relevant to the recent global pandemic COVID-19 that has caused human and economic losses and will leave footprints for the coming years and generations

Fire protection is obvious for safety purposes in human life because mishandling of fire sources can be the cause of serious accidents. In this paper, an Arduino based automatic fire alarm provider with extinguishing device is proposed for fire protection. The thermal model of a house and explanation of the proposed system is presented where smoke detector and temperature sensor assist the flame sensor. The flame sensor generates electric signals and transmits via mobile phone to the corresponding person to get notified. Besides this, the signal also triggers the fire extinguishing system automatically to take quick action. Simulation results are obtained by using MATLAB software. An Arduino based prototype of the proposed device is built and tested by creating artificial smoke and flame. Test results prove that, the proposed fire protection system responses quickly and effectively.

Wildfire is indiscriminate in its impacts, affecting communities, ecosystems, and landscapes regardless of borders or distinctions. As a social-ecological disturbance, wildfire embodies complex, interdependent interactions between humans and the natural environment and poses significant challenges for management. From residential properties to public lands, human-wildfire interactions occur along a continuum from dense urban centers to natural landscapes. There is an urgent need to better understand these dynamics, especially in the context of growing human pressures on natural systems, shifting wildfire activity, and climate change, which can amplify human exposure to wildfire risks. Focusing on the western United States, this research examines key aspects of human-wildfire interactions to advance proactive fire prevention and risk reduction strategies. Land use and land cover maps can be a useful tool for informing decision-making and improving hazard response and mitigation efforts, such as in the context of wildfires, but some existing maps are limited in their ability to identify building types. Chapter One leveraged remote sensing technologies and cloud computing to produce annually resolved maps of built infrastructure across the Snake River Plain in southern Idaho. We demonstrate that finer resolution maps that distinguish between residential and other infrastructure types can be generated from freely available remote sensing imagery and open source software that leverages data fusion with multispectral and radar imagery. Improved infrastructure maps advance our understanding of the wildland-urban interface (WUI), a prevailing term to describe areas where human and natural fire-prone systems meet and intermingle. However, the WUI concept has no unanimous definition, and methodologies for WUI mapping are highly varied. In Chapter Two, a critical review of the WUI concept, we demonstrate that the definition of the WUI profoundly shapes how it is mapped and interpreted, with implications for wildfire risk assessment, resource allocation, decision making and policy development. We emphasize the importance of adopting WUI definitions and methodologies that are flexible, tailored to local challenges, focus on proactive fire prevention, and involve collaboration between researchers and practitioners. WUI landscapes can be diverse, but human presence and proximity to vegetated lands is a consistent characteristic. A nexus for human-wildfire interactions, WUI spaces have drawn attention to the ways human behaviors contribute to, mitigate, and prevent wildfires. This focus has grown as human activity is increasingly recognized as a key driver of shifting wildfire patterns across the US. Less attention, however, has been directed towards areas adjacent to the WUI, such as public lands, where people engage in recreational activities. Chapter Three employed a multi-scale approach to explore wildfire ignition sources and patterns on public lands managed under the Bureau of Land Management National Conservation Lands system. We reveal that wildfire occurrences on these lands have increased, irrespective of whether the ignition cause is natural or anthropogenic. Further, natural ignitions dominate in most areas. However, the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, southern Idaho, emerged as hotspot for human-caused ignitions, particularly due to firearms, explosives use, equipment and vehicle use. National ignition patterns show higher natural ignitions in the non-coastal western US, but our findings highlight this area as a notable anomaly. This offers valuable insights into potential future conditions on other public lands, underscoring the need for targeted outreach, stronger regulatory measures, and improved fire-cause reporting standards to reduce human-caused ignitions. Collectively, this work advances our understanding of human-wildfire interactions both quantitatively and qualitatively. By prioritizing accurate, reliable data - from land use and land cover mapping to ignition source attribution - this research provides a foundation for more effective fire prevention strategies, targeted education and outreach efforts, and efforts to reduce human exposure to wildfire risk in an era of intensifying fire activity. Furthermore, by critically examining how such data can be used to define targeted areas and inform decision-making, this research advances knowledge of how data can be responsibly leveraged to shape more effective and equitable wildfire management practices.

Wildland-urban interface (WUI) residents in Michigan were interviewed using a contingent valuation protocol to assess their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for incremental reductions in the risk of losing their homes to wild-fire. WTP was elicited using a probability model which segments the risk of structure loss into “public” and “private” components. Most respondents expressed positive WTP for publicly funded risk reduction activities. These respondents were characterized by tolerance for property taxes, perception of significant risk, high ranking of fire risk relative to other hazards, and high objective estimates of existing risk, and their WTP amounts were positively correlated with income and property value. Given that 97% of the respondents were insured against property loss, the large number of positive WTP responses suggests that substantial non-market and unreimbursed losses are experienced when structures are destroyed by wildfires.

The terrorist acts of September 11, 2001 were a wake-up call for changing our traditional response to risks of terrorism. Given that government and worldwide think-tank organizations maintain that risks of terrorism will continue for the indefinite future, the following questions deserve strategic answers. How long can we respond to terrorism with tactical measures only, sustain current curtailments of some of our freedoms, travel, and quality of life, and absorb losses in human life and properties? Should not underlying strategic motivation lead to the tactical measures? Why do so many groups and individuals in some developing countries hate us? Is it because they fear that the ideas we export through television, movies, literature, and music have a corrupting influence on their cultures? Is it because of past operations that we conducted in such countries as Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Granada? Can the genesis of the risks of terrorism to the homeland be traced to the unfavorable socioeconomic conditions in less-privileged and developing countries, where civil and religious freedoms are close to nonexistent, and sanitary conditions, health and education, and critical infrastructures of essential utilities are almost at the same level that existed in the United States almost a century ago? If we could make progress at improving the quality of life of the billions of people in the developing countries and become more sensitive to their needs, cultures, and heritage, would their hatred subside? What other measures can we take to reduce their hatred, without compromising our basic cultural and democratic principles or their cultural and social heritage?

Nowadays, one of the most critical challenges is the ongoing climate change, which has multiple and significant impacts on human life in financial and environmental levels. As the adverse effects of unexpected destructive natural extreme events, such as loss of human lives and property, will become more frequent and intensive in the future, especially in developing countries, the efficient confront is required in a holistic manner. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop novelty tools to enhance awareness and preparedness, assess risks and support decision-making, aiming to increase social resilience to climate changes. This work suggests a unified multilayer framework that encapsulates machine learning techniques in the risk assessment process for analysing and fusing dynamically heterogeneous information obtained from the field.KeywordsRisk assessmentRisk knowledgeCrisis classificationWeather forecasting systemsRisk-based decision support systemsMachine learning

In-depth interviews conducted with homeowners in five Colorado wildland–urban interface communities reveal that the homeowners face difficult decisions regarding the reduction of wildfire risk. Rather than seeing risk reduction as straightforward, homeowners appear to be involved in a complex decision-making process with social considerations. The interviews shed light on the social context in which homeowners make wildfire mitigation decisions, participants' perceptions of how the biophysical landscape near their residences affects mitigation, and participants' perceptions of wildfire mitigation options.

Changes in temperature and precipitation in the European Alps are reflected in an increasing number of wildfire events and burnt areas. Therefore, apart from conducting research on the behaviour of wildfires in regions with high fire danger, it is important to analyse the vulnerability of settlements, buildings, and infrastructure also in areas with less experience with the impacts of an increasing wildfire hazard. Studies focusing on the vulnerability of the built environment do exist, but they are mostly limited to the interaction of buildings with fire, rather than offering a tool to measure this vulnerability for planning and conducting risk reduction measures. We attempt to close this gap by assessing the physical vulnerability of elements at risk located at the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) in several case study areas in the Austrian Alps. In the absence of empirical data and by using a co-creation approach, we engage experts from various domains (firefighters, managers, planners, and government officials) to develop a tool for wildfire risk management. The tool is based on indicators to assess the vulnerability of different characteristics of elements at risk, including residential buildings, hotels, industry, critical infrastructure, and cultural heritage. Applications in each case study area are designed to demonstrate the usability of the tool in various disaster risk reduction activities and different contexts with a high or low wildfire danger. A final workshop is planned to ensure the dissemination of the results in the entire wildfire community. The resulting REVEAL decision support tool should be applicable not only in other regions of Austria, but also in other European regions that do not have experience and empirical data related to the impacts of wildfire events on infrastructure.

Of all natural disasters of the twentieth century, earthquakes caused the largest amount of losses. Although the number of earthquakes remains fairly unchanged, the loss of properties and human lives in recent periods has increased manifolds due to increasing concentration of human population and urbanisation in earthquake-prone areas. Recent improvement in documentations and computational facilities, however, allows for the preparation of seismic microzonation maps of such areas for urban planning and earthquake mitigation purposes. This paper discusses the development of seismic microzonation maps for Banda Aceh which lies close to the Sumatra Subduction Zone and the Sumatran Transform Faults, making the city extremely vulnerable to earthquake hazards. The development of the maps employs Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques that make use of several layers of parameters influencing earthquake hazards such as seismological data, faults, tsunami, etc. and site characteristic data such as soil type, groundwater distribution and depth, geological and geophysical data. The seismic microzonation maps incorporate various seismic hazard maps including ground shaking hazard map, liquefaction susceptibility hazard map, landslide potential hazard map, surface faulting hazard map and tsunami hazard map. The final composite map identifies zones with various degrees of hazards which will enable planners to avert hazardous locations during site selection processes, thus reducing losses.