Mitigating Wildfire Risk in the Wildland Urban Interface

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

As communities in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) face ever-growing risk from wildfires, it is crucial that government agencies, utility providers, and communities themselves engage in proactive risk mitigation. These efforts are supported by a number of intersecting and overlapping policies at the federal, state, and local levels. This panel discusses the roles of agency capacity, community organization, and utility planning in mitigating WUI wildfire risk, as well as the policies that define the geography of the WUI itself. The first paper investigates the ways in which state policy incentivizes electric utilities in the U.S. West to develop and adopt wildfire mitigation plans. The second paper examines the effect of personnel unavailability on the execution of prescribed burns in National Forests. The third paper focuses on the formation and operation of Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) and their efficacy in implementing prescribed burns and mobilizing communities. The fourth paper evaluates the growth of WUI communities using property records to identify rapidly growing areas as well as communities that may have been overlooked by prior WUI mapping methods. Together, these papers cover a range of policy issues relating to WUI wildfire risk mitigation. The panel provides policy insights with significant implications for how actors in different agencies and organizations can best reduce the threat to homes, lives, and livelihoods posed by wildland fires.

Policy Area

• Natural Resource, Energy, and Environmental Policy

Secondary Policy Area

• National & Homeland Security and Crisis Management

Chair

• Elizabeth Froom Pelletier, U.S. Census Bureau

Discussants

• Gwen Arnold, University of California, Davis

• Nicola Ulibarri, University of California, Irvine

Organizer

• Reed Jonathan Humphrey, University of Washington

Individual Presentations

• Who is to blame for utility caused fires? Structural determinants of wildfire mitigation plan adoption - Presenting Author: Ryan P Scott, Colorado State University

• Analyzing Prescribed Burn Associations: Network Structures, Resource Mobilization, and Policy Outcomes - Presenting Author: Tyler A Scott, University of California, Davis

• Mapping the Trajectories of Community Wildfire Exposure - Presenting Author: Reed Jonathan Humphrey, University of Washington