How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters in the wildland-urban interface

Every year worldwide some extraordinary wildfires occur, overwhelming suppression capabilities, causing substantial damages, and often resulting in fatalities. Given their increasing frequency, there is a debate about how to address these wildfires with significant social impacts, but there is no agreement upon terminology to describe them. The concept of extreme wildfire event (EWE) has emerged to bring some coherence on this kind of events. It is increasingly used, often as a synonym of other terms related to wildfires of high intensity and size, but its definition remains elusive. The goal of this paper is to go beyond drawing on distinct disciplinary perspectives to develop a holistic view of EWE as a social-ecological phenomenon. Based on literature review and using a transdisciplinary approach, this paper proposes a definition of EWE as a process and an outcome. Considering the lack of a consistent "scale of gravity" to leverage extreme wildfire events such as in natural hazards (e.g., tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes) we present a proposal of wildfire classification with seven categories based on measurable fire spread and behavior parameters and suppression difficulty. The categories 5 to 7 are labeled as EWE.

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“…Conditions leading to flame and lofted burning ember (firebrand) exposures, home ignition, and unsuccessful firefighting efforts [153].…”

Section: Extreme Wildfire Burning Conditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defining Extreme Wildfire Events: Difficulties, Challenges, and Impacts

Tedim

Leone

Amraoui

et al. 2018

Fire

310

220

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“…In some areas, such as Southern California, a high density of fire-susceptible assets and fire-prone vegetation may limit opportunities for treatments aimed at restoring natural fire regimes. In these areas, recognition of the limited effectiveness of fuel breaks under extreme conditions may lead instead to risk mitigation strategies focused on reducing susceptibility of the built environment (Calkin et al 2014;Penman et al 2014;Syphard et al 2011). Elsewhere on publicly managed lands in the Sierra Nevada and Northern California, fuel treatment strategies could be designed to set the stage for increased rates of prescribed and managed wildfire (North et al 2012).…”

Section: Relevance To Californiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling fuel treatment impacts on fire suppression cost savings: A review

Thompson¹,

Anderson²

2015

Cal Ag

Self Cite

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High up-front costs and uncertain return on investment make it difficult for land managers to economically justify large-scale fuel treatments, which remove trees and other vegetation to improve conditions for fire control, reduce the likelihood of ignition, or reduce potential damage from wildland fire if it occurs. In the short-term, revenue from harvested forest products can offset treatment costs and broaden opportunities for treatment implementation. Increasingly, financial analysis of fuel treatments is also incorporating long-term savings through reduced fire suppression costs, which can be difficult to quantify. This paper reviews the findings and lessons from recent modeling work evaluating the potential relationship between fuel treatments and avoided fire suppression costs. Across studies, treatments are generally predicted to reduce future fire suppression costs, although the magnitude of savings is unlikely to fully offset fuel treatment costs. This funding gap highlights the importance of forest product revenues in facilitating landscape-scale treatment. Factors influencing the effects of fuel treatment investments on fire suppression costs include the causal pathway linking treatment inputs to suppression cost outcomes; the spatiotemporal uncertainty of wildfire-treatment interactions; and the scale of fuel treatment programs.

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“…These shifts produce continued if not growing concerns over escalating fire suppression costs, losses of highly valued resources including homes, and firefighter fatalities (e.g., [5,6]). Where fires are of higher severity than would be expected by the range of natural variability, concerns are raised about losses to natural ecosystems and endangered species habitat [7,8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Model-Based Framework to Evaluate Alternative Wildfire Suppression Strategies

Riley

Thompson

Scott³

et al. 2018

Resources

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Abstract:The complexity and demands of wildland firefighting in the western U.S. have increased over recent decades due to factors including the expansion of the wildland-urban interface, lengthening fire seasons associated with climate change, and changes in vegetation due to past fire suppression and timber harvest. In light of these changes, the use of more wildland fire on the landscape could reduce fuels and form barriers to the spread of future fires while performing forest restoration in some areas. However, the risks, costs and benefits of changing fire response strategy have not been quantified. Here, we identify gaps regarding the ability to simulate alternative wildfire suppression strategies, due to a number of factors including limited data collected on fireline construction, as well as synergies between firefighting resources and resource effectiveness. We present a fire management continuum: at one end lies full suppression of all fires under all circumstances, and at the opposite end lies no suppression of any fires regardless of location or time in season, with a wide array of managed fire options falling in between. Next, we demonstrate the proof-of-concept using a stochastic fire simulation model, FSim, to simulate two alternative fire suppression strategies close to opposite ends of this continuum for the Sierra National Forest of California: (1) business-as-usual, which equates to nearly full fire suppression; and (2) full suppression of human-caused fires and no suppression actions on lightning-caused fires. Results indicate that fire management strategy can substantially affect the number of large fires and landscape burn probabilities, both of which were shown to increase under the second scenario. However, temporal feedbacks are expected to play an important role: we show that increases in burned area substantially limit ignition potential and the extent of subsequent fires within the first five to ten years, especially under the second scenario. While subject to current data gaps and limitations in fire modeling, the methodology presented here can be used to simulate a number of alternative fire suppression strategies, including decisions to suppress or not suppress fires based on location, time of season or other factors. This method also provides basic inputs needed to estimate risks, costs and benefits of various alternative suppression strategies in future work. In future work, uncertainties resulting from current limitations in knowledge can be addressed using techniques such as scenario planning in order to provide land managers with a set of possible fire outcomes.

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How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters in the wildland-urban interface

Cited by 391 publications

References 32 publications

Defining Extreme Wildfire Events: Difficulties, Challenges, and Impacts

Defining Extreme Wildfire Events: Difficulties, Challenges, and Impacts

Modeling fuel treatment impacts on fire suppression cost savings: A review

A Model-Based Framework to Evaluate Alternative Wildfire Suppression Strategies

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