Community Wildfire Resilience

Keywords: wildfire, resilience, disaster, community, interdisciplinary model, risk
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

Across much of California and the American West, climate change is increasing the severity and frequency of wildfires, which are further compounded by over a century of fire suppression and exclusion. It is therefore imperative that communities living in the wildland-urban-interface (WUI) learn how to coexist with fire. This requires not only predicting where wildfires are likely to occur, but also where they will have the most impact on communities. Comprehensively assessing a community’s risk of wildfire disaster requires quantifying the probability of a wildfire event (the hazard) as well as accounting for the social drivers that shape a community’s exposures, vulnerabilities, and responses to that event. Fire-prone lands across the West are owned and managed by a patchwork of land owners and jurisdictions, making coordinated management both challenging and essential for risk reduction. Therefore, understanding the individual, community, and government responses to wildfire risk and their patterns of interaction can highlight opportunities for future work to increase capacity of the most effective response strategies. In this poster, I will share my planned approach to characterize the broader governance structure of wildfire management in California, and discuss potential methods for answering questions about the role of collaboration in mitigating wildfire risk and building resilience to disasters.