Research Database
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4
Are wildfire risk mitigators more prepared to evacuate? Insights from communities in the Western United States
Year: 2025
As the realized experiences of wildfires threatening communities increase, the importance of proactive evacuation preparation and wildfire risk mitigation on private property to reduce the loss of lives and property is shaping wildfire policy and programs. To date, research has focused on pre-wildfire evacuation preparation and risk mitigation independently. This paper examines the substitutability or complementarity of these proactive risk-reducing actions. If mitigation and evacuation preparedness are substitutes, wildfire education programs may take a life-over-property approach. However,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Location, Location, Location: The Influence of Local Social Complexity on Risk Reduction Strategies in a WUI Settlement
Year: 2025
This research builds from existing scholarship to highlight the important role social complexity plays on managing and mitigating wildfire risk in the wildland-urban interface. Researchers employed in-depth interviews to uncover similarities and differences in land and wildfire management preferences among what would appear to many to be a relatively homogenous population in a valley on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah. In spite of demographic similarities, researchers found meaningful and complex differences with regard to the local social context of subpopulations within the drainage.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Innovation to support wildfire risk-based decision-making: examining the incident strategic alignment process
Year: 2025
BackgroundIn the face of increased complexity, the USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) is emphasizing the use of risk-based spatial analytics and expert coaching of fire managers through consistent processes and practices to inform safer, effective, and strategic decision-making during incident management. The Incident Strategic Alignment Process (ISAP) integrates collaborative dialogue with risk management assistance (RMA) and other spatial analytics to develop and deploy a consistent, science-based strategic planning model for incident management. An important challenge is…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Insights into how Community Wildfire Protection Plans act as drivers of wildfire preparedness
Year: 2025
Wildfire poses an increasing threat to communities in the Western US, driven by climate change and rising human settlement in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). It is imperative that communities in fire-prone areas become “fire-adapted” to safely manage their risk. Community Wildfire Protection Plans (CWPPs) constitute an approach by the federal government to enable communities to collaboratively plan for, and adapt to, wildfire. How well these plans have enabled at-risk rural Colorado communities to become “fire-adapted” since their development is still debated. Through interviews with key…
Publication Type: Journal Article