Strengthening Wildfire Resilience through Better Planning, Policy and GIS Spatial Analysis using the PIRS™ Methodology

Abstract

Wildland fires are amongst the most destructive natural and human-caused hazards affecting communities around the world. Climate change is exacerbating the problem, creating conditions that favor increased frequency and severity of wildfires. The issue is especially acute in California where significant development has occurred in the wildland-urban interface (WUI).

To address this problem, a multidisciplinary project team composed of faculty and affiliates from two universities are partnering with several California cities and counties to develop and test the Plan Integration for Resilience Scorecard™ (PIRS) for Wildfire methodology. Originally developed for flooding, the PIRS™method enables a spatial evaluation of a community’s network of plans (e.g., General (Comprehensive) Plan, Hazard Mitigation Plan, Community Wildfire Protection Plan) to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to hazards. A wildfire-hazard-focused PIRS™, supported by a spatial (GIS) framework, enables an understanding of the heterogeneous effects of policy across a community and identification of policies that support resilience or conflict with risk reduction. The process aims to harmonize a community’s network of plans by systematically assessing policies and facilitating their adjustment to improve resilience in the most vulnerable locations using geospatial analysis.

Preliminary results indicate that the PIRS™ method is generalizable and can be applied to the wildfire hazard with small methodological and contextual modifications. Wildland fire in the WUI presents a unique analytical challenge due to the dynamics of fuel (natural and built environment) variables interacting with climate, topography, and human variables (e.g., land use, development patterns).