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Household Response to Wildfire:

Integrating Behavioral Science and Evacuation Modeling to Improve Community Wildfire Resilience

Over the past four decades, wildfire frequency and intensity have surged, doubling the average annual burn area. Rapid population expansion into the wildland-urban interface (WUI) exacerbates risks of human-caused ignition and damage to communities. Our project addresses a gap in wildfire hazard education by integrating behavioral science with active-learning and goal-setting strategies to enhance WUI residents’ adoption of pre-event hazard adjustments. Interviews of regional and city emergency managers will explore evacuation protocols and messaging tactics during wildfires. Insights will inform the development of FlamMap fire analysis scenarios tailored to stakeholders’ communities, engaging them in critical decision-making and messaging at different time steps. We’ll also leverage social-behavioral data and transportation models to construct agent-based models (ABMs) for precise insights on public responses. Our findings will refine hazard education strategies, enhance community engagement and local authorities’ preparedness efforts and elicit a direct impact on communities by co-producing knowledge with community stakeholders, ensuring relevance and utility in our study areas.

People

  • Michael Lindell, Emeritus Texas A&M University
  • Haizhong Wang, Oregon State University
  • Brittany D. Brand, Boise State University
  • Ashley R. Bosa, Boise State University
  • Chenqiang Liu, Oregon State University
  • Louisa Wildman, Oregon State University
  • Thomas J. Cova, University of Utah

Project Collaborators

  • Paul Marusich, Ada County Office of Emergency Management and Community Resilience
  • Kelly Burns, Emergency Management Coordinator for the City of Ashland, Oregon
  • Chris Chambers, Forestry, Ashland Fire and Rescue