Research and development supporting risk-based wildfire effects prediction for fuels and fire management: status and needs

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Hyde ◽  
Matthew B. Dickinson ◽  
Gil Bohrer ◽  
David Calkin ◽  
Louisa Evers ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Fire Effects ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Fire Behaviour ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Risk Processes

Wildland fire management has moved beyond a singular focus on suppression, calling for wildfire management for ecological benefit where no critical human assets are at risk. Processes causing direct effects and indirect, long-term ecosystem changes are complex and multidimensional. Robust risk-assessment tools are required that account for highly variable effects on multiple values-at-risk and balance competing objectives, to support decision making. Providing wildland fire managers with risk-analysis tools requires a broad scientific foundation in fire behaviour and effects prediction as well as high quality computer-based tools and associated databases. We outline a wildfire risk-assessment approach, highlight recent developments in fire effects science and associated research needs, and recommend developing a comprehensive plan for integrated advances in wildfire occurrence, behaviour and effects research leading to improved decision support tools for wildland fire managers. We find that the current state of development in fire behaviour and effects science imposes severe limits on the development of risk-assessment technology. In turn, the development of technology has been largely disconnected from the research enterprise, resulting in a confusing array of ad hoc tools that only partially meet decision-support needs for fuel and fire management. We make the case for defining a common risk-based analytic framework for fire-effects assessment across the range of fire-management activities and developing a research function to support the framework.

Built structure identification in wildland fire decision support

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 78 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Calkin ◽  
Jon D. Rieck ◽  
Kevin D. Hyde ◽  
Jeffrey D. Kaiden
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Decision Support ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structure Identification ◽  
Incident Management ◽  
Wildland Fire Management

Recent ex-urban development within the wildland interface has significantly increased the complexity and associated cost of federal wildland fire management in the United States. Rapid identification of built structures relative to probable fire spread can help to reduce that complexity and improve the performance of incident management teams. Approximate structure locations can be mapped as specific-point building cluster features using cadastral data records. This study assesses the accuracy and precision of building clusters relative to GPS structure locations and compares these results with area mapping of housing density using census-based products. We demonstrate that building clusters are reasonably accurate and precise approximations of structure locations and provide superior strategic information for wildland fire decision support compared with area density techniques. Real-time delivery of structure locations and other values-at-risk mapped relative to probable fire spread through the Wildland Fire Decision Support System Rapid Assessment of Values at Risk procedure supports development of wildland fire management strategies.

Describing wildland surface fuel loading for fire management: a review of approaches, methods and systems

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert E. Keane
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fire Behaviour ◽  
Fuel Loading ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Prediction Systems ◽  
In Fire

Wildland fuelbeds are exceptionally complex, consisting of diverse particles of many sizes, types and shapes with abundances and properties that are highly variable in time and space. This complexity makes it difficult to accurately describe, classify, sample and map fuels for wildland fire research and management. As a result, many fire behaviour and effects software prediction systems use a generalised description of fuels to simplify data collection and entry into various computer programs. There are several major fuel description systems currently used in the United States, Canada and Australia, and this is a source of confusion for many in fire management. This paper (1) summarises the challenges of describing fuels, (2) contrasts approaches (association, classification and abstraction) for developing fuel description systems and (3) discusses possible future directions in wildland fuel description and science to transition to a universal fuel description system. Most discussion centres on surface fuel loadings as the primary descriptive characteristic. This synthesis paper is intended to provide background for understanding surface fuel classification and description systems and their use in simulating fire behaviour and effects, quantifying carbon inventories and evaluating site productivity.

A comparison of electronic and manual fracture risk assessment tools in screening elderly male US veterans at risk for osteoporosis

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (11) ◽  
pp. 3107-3111 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. T. Williams ◽  
P. T. Lawrence ◽  
K. L. Miller ◽  
J. L. Crook ◽  
J. LaFleur ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Fracture Risk ◽  
Fracture Risk Assessment ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Elderly Male ◽  
Risk Assessment Tools ◽  
Us Veterans

scholarly journals Effects of policy change on wildland fire management strategies: evidence for a paradigm shift in the western US?

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (10) ◽  
pp. 857 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse D. Young ◽  
Alexander M. Evans ◽  
Jose M. Iniguez ◽  
Andrea Thode ◽  
Marc D. Meyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fire Management ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Western Us ◽  
Strategic Options ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Wildland Fire Management

In 2009, new guidance for wildland fire management in the United States expanded the range of strategic options for managers working to reduce the threat of high-severity wildland fire, improve forest health and respond to a changing climate. Markedly, the new guidance provided greater flexibility to manage wildland fires to meet multiple resource objectives. We use Incident Status Summary reports to understand how wildland fire management strategies have differed across the western US in recent years and how management has changed since the 2009 Guidance for Implementation of Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. When controlling for confounding variation, we found the 2009 Policy Guidance along with other concurrent advances in fire management motivated an estimated 27 to 73% increase in the number of fires managed with expanded strategic options, with only limited evidence of an increase in size or annual area burned. Fire weather captured a manager’s intent and allocation of fire management resources relative to burning conditions, where a manager’s desire and ability to suppress is either complemented by fire weather, at odds with fire weather, or put aside due to other priorities. We highlight opportunities to expand the use of strategic options in fire-adapted forests to improve fuel heterogeneity.

Changing fuel management strategies - The challenge of meeting new information and analysis needs

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan G. Conard ◽  
Timothy Hartzell ◽  
Michael W. Hilbruner ◽  
G. Thomas Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
Fire Management ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Fire Hazard ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
Fuel Management ◽  
Burned Areas ◽  
Ecological Principles ◽  
In Fire

This paper was presented at the conference ‘Integrating spatial technologies and ecological principles for a new age in fire management’, Boise, Idaho, USA, June 1999 ‘The earth, born in fire, baptized by lightning since before life"s beginning, has been and is a fire planet.’ E.V. Komarek Attitudes and policies concerning wildland fire, fire use, and fire management have changed greatly since early European settlers arrived in North America. Active suppression of wildfires accelerated early in the 20th Century, and areas burned dropped dramatically. In recent years, burned areas and cost of fires have begun to increase, in part due to fuel buildups resulting from fire suppression. The importance of fire as an ecosystem process is also being increasingly recognized. These factors are leading to changes in Federal agency fire and fuels management policies, including increased emphasis on use of prescribed fire and other treatments to reduce fuel loads and fire hazard. Changing fire management strategies have highlighted the need for better information and improved risk analysis techniques for setting regional and national priorities, and for monitoring and evaluating the ecological, economic, and social effects and tradeoffs of fuel management treatments and wildfires. The US Department of Interior and USDA Forest Service began the Joint Fire Science Program in 1998 to provide a sound scientific basis for implementing and evaluating fuel management activities. Development of remote sensing and GIS tools will play a key role in enabling land managers to evaluate hazards, monitor changes, and reduce risks to the environment and the public from wildland fires.

Estimating the consequences of wildfire for wildfire risk assessment, a case study in the southern Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (11) ◽  
pp. 2104-2114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Tutsch ◽  
Wolfgang Haider ◽  
Ben Beardmore ◽  
Kenneth Lertzman ◽  
Andrew B. Cooper ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
At Risk ◽  
British Columbia ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Loss Of Life ◽  
Wildfire Risk ◽  
The Common ◽  
Gulf Islands ◽  
In Fire

Wildfire risk assessment research has made considerable progress towards estimating the probability of wildfires but comparatively little progress towards estimating the expected consequences of potential fires. One challenge with estimating wildfire consequences has been to identify a common metric that can be applied to consequences measured in different units. In this paper, we use the preferences of representatives of local fire management agencies as the common consequences metric and apply it to a case study in the southern Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada. The method uses an expert survey and a maximum-difference conjoint analysis to establish the relative importance of specific fire consequences. A fire with a major potential for loss of life was considered to be about three times worse than major damage to houses and 4.5 times worse than loss of a rare species. Risk ratings were very sensitive to changes in fire consequences ratings. As the complexity of values at risk and number of stakeholders increase, the most efficient allocation of wildfire prevention, protection, and suppression resources becomes increasingly challenging to determine. Thus, as the complexity of stakeholder representation and values at risk increases, we need to pay increasing attention to quantitative methods for measuring wildfire consequences.

Integrating values and risk perceptions into a decision support system

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara J. Morehouse ◽  
Sara O'Brien ◽  
Gary Christopherson ◽  
Peter Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Decision Support ◽  
Strategic Planning ◽  
Decision Support System ◽  
Support System ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Fire Risk ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Promising Alternative

One of the thorniest challenges to effective wildland fire management is integration of public perceptions and values into science-based adaptive management. One promising alternative is incorporation of public values into place-based decision support technologies that are accessible to lay citizens as well as to fire-management experts. A survey of individuals, including residents, fire and fuels managers, volunteer firefighters, and others living in or near four mountain areas of the US Southwest, identified a set of personal values and perceptions about wildland fire risk that could be spatially represented in a geographic information science-based decision support system designed for wildland fire strategic planning efforts. We define values, in this context, as phenomena that are not necessarily quantifiable but that strongly attract and connect individuals for whatever reasons to particular areas. Inclusion of this type of information into interactive decision tools for fire management may contribute to improved understanding and finer-scale spatial visualisation of public perceptions of fire risk. The integration of such factors in decision support tools offers opportunities for improving interactions between managers and the public involved in strategic planning processes for fire management.

High-resolution infrared thermography for capturing wildland fire behaviour: RxCADRE 2012

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph J. O'Brien ◽  
E. Louise Loudermilk ◽  
Benjamin Hornsby ◽  
Andrew T. Hudak ◽  
Benjamin C. Bright ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Radiant Energy ◽  
Fire Spread ◽  
Fire Effects ◽  
Fire Behaviour ◽  
Oblique View ◽  
Fire Modelling ◽  
Radiative Power ◽  
Fire Front ◽  
Research Experiment

Wildland fire radiant energy emission is one of the only measurements of combustion that can be made at wide spatial extents and high temporal and spatial resolutions. Furthermore, spatially and temporally explicit measurements are critical for making inferences about fire effects and useful for examining patterns of fire spread. In this study we describe our methods for capturing and analysing spatially and temporally explicit long-wave infrared (LWIR) imagery from the RxCADRE (Prescribed Fire Combustion and Atmospheric Dynamics Research Experiment) project and examine the usefulness of these data in investigating fire behaviour and effects. We compare LWIR imagery captured at fine and moderate spatial and temporal resolutions (from 1 cm2 to 1 m2; and from 0.12 to 1 Hz) using both nadir and oblique measurements. We analyse fine-scale spatial heterogeneity of fire radiant power and energy released in several experimental burns. There was concurrence between the measurements, although the oblique view estimates of fire radiative power were consistently higher than the nadir view estimates. The nadir measurements illustrate the significance of fuel characteristics, particularly type and connectivity, in driving spatial variability at fine scales. The nadir and oblique measurements illustrate the usefulness of the data for describing the location and movement of the fire front at discrete moments in time at these fine and moderate resolutions. Spatially and temporally resolved data from these techniques show promise to effectively link the combustion environment with post-fire processes, remote sensing at larger scales and wildland fire modelling efforts.

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