A national approach for integrating wildfire simulation modeling into Wildland Urban Interface risk assessments within the United States

With climate-driven increases in wildfires in the western U.S., it is imperative to understand how the risk to homes is also changing nationwide. Here, we quantify the number of homes threatened, suppression costs, and ignition sources for 1.6 million wildfires in the United States (U.S.; 1992–2015). Human-caused wildfires accounted for 97% of the residential homes threatened (within 1 km of a wildfire) and nearly a third of suppression costs. This study illustrates how the wildland-urban interface (WUI), which accounts for only a small portion of U.S. land area (10%), acts as a major source of fires, almost exclusively human-started. Cumulatively (1992–2015), just over one million homes were within human-caused wildfire perimeters in the WUI, where communities are built within flammable vegetation. An additional 58.8 million homes were within one kilometer across the 24-year record. On an annual basis in the WUI (1999–2014), an average of 2.5 million homes (2.2–2.8 million, 95% confidence interval) were threatened by human-started wildfires (within the perimeter and up to 1-km away). The number of residential homes in the WUI grew by 32 million from 1990–2015. The convergence of warmer, drier conditions and greater development into flammable landscapes is leaving many communities vulnerable to human-caused wildfires. These areas are a high priority for policy and management efforts that aim to reduce human ignitions and promote resilience to future fires, particularly as the number of residential homes in the WUI grew across this record and are expected to continue to grow in coming years.

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Produce Consumption in the United States: An Analysis of Consumption Frequencies, Serving Sizes, Processing Forms, and High-Consuming Population Subgroups for Microbial Risk Assessments

Journal of Food Protection ◽

10.4315/0362-028x.jfp-11-313 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 75 (2) ◽

pp. 328-340 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

K. HOELZER ◽

R. POUILLOT ◽

K. EGAN ◽

S. DENNIS

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Food Availability ◽

Fruits And Vegetables ◽

Temporal Trends ◽

The United States ◽

Risk Assessments ◽

Economic Research ◽

Heat Treated ◽

Consumption Data ◽

Serving Sizes

A great variety of fruits and vegetables are available in the United States. These items are produced in various geographic regions by a diverse industry. Produce has been increasingly identified as a vehicle for disease outbreaks. Changes in consumption may explain this increase, but analyses of produce consumption are limited. Comprehensive assessments of the public health risks associated with produce depend on quantitative consumption data, including the population fractions and subgroups of consumers, the quantities consumed by these individuals, and the processing that occurs before consumption. Here, we provide an analysis of nationally representative consumption estimates by estimating consumption frequencies, serving sizes, and processing forms for a variety of produce commodities based on 1999 through 2006 data from “What We Eat in America,” the dietary interview component of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey performed by the National Center for Health Statistics. Consumption patterns for fresh and heat-treated produce were assessed, compared with U.S. food availability estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service (ERS), and combined with ERS data on temporal trends in food availability and nondomestic produce origins. To identify high-consuming population subgroups, we explored consumer habits and demographic predictors of fresh produce consumption (data available at www.foodrisk.org). Our analysis of common outbreak vehicles revealed limited temporal changes in food availability but frequent consumption as fresh commodities. In addition to providing quantitative consumption estimates for risk assessments, our data clearly show that produce consumption differs among fruits and vegetables, fresh and heat-treated foods, and demographic subgroups. These results are valuable for risk assessments and outbreak investigations and allow targeting of risk communication or interventions to those individuals at greatest risk.

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Proactive Risk Assessments and the Continuity of Business Principles: Perspectives on This Novel, Combined Approach to Develop Guidance for the Permitted Movement of Agricultural Products during a Foot-and-Mouth Disease Outbreak in the United States

Frontiers in Veterinary Science ◽

10.3389/fvets.2016.00117 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 3 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Timothy J. Goldsmith ◽

Marie Rene Culhane ◽

Fernando Sampedro ◽

Carol J. Cardona

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Foot And Mouth Disease ◽

The United States ◽

Disease Outbreak ◽

Mouth Disease ◽

Agricultural Products ◽

Risk Assessments ◽

Combined Approach ◽

Foot And Mouth ◽

Business Principles

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Verification of usRAP Risk Assessments for Run-Off and Head-On Crashes Using Field Data

Transportation Research Record Journal of the Transportation Research Board ◽

10.1177/03611981211032217 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 036119812110322

Author(s):

Fahmid Hossain ◽

Juan C. Medina

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

The United States ◽

Risk Assessments ◽

Crash Data ◽

Horizontal Curves ◽

Crash Rates ◽

Run Off ◽

Fatal Crashes ◽

Safety Assessments ◽

Safety Applications

The United States Road Assessment Program (usRAP) provides a systemic approach to estimate the risk of severe injury and fatal crashes along roadway segments based on the expected safety performance of roadway and roadside characteristics, together with a general estimation of traffic volume. Detailed crash data are not needed for safety assessments, providing advantages over more traditional crash-driven approaches. However, experiences with usRAP are limited to the United States and to date, the program has a growing but limited number of participating states. Verification of the adequacy of usRAP assessments is therefore of significant value, not only to identify strengths and limitations of the methodology within the U.S. context, but also to potentially expand the set of tools available to agencies. This paper presents a verification of usRAP risk assessments for run-off-road and head-on crashes using over 7,000 mi of coded segments and five years of crash data collected in Utah. Comparisons between risk estimations from usRAP and actual crash rates provided insights into the expected and observed effects of roadside objects and their distances from the lanes traveled, type of median present, and horizontal curves. A spatial correlation test also confirmed the agreement between usRAP risk assessments and crash data, providing additional promising indications of the suitability of this systemic methodology for safety applications.

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