TRIs and Wildfires: Country-Wide Analysis
TRIs and Wildfires: Country-Wide Analysis
Spencer Harris, Eckerd College, Economics, Environmental Studies, and Animal Studies
As wildfires become more common, understanding the risk they pose, especially on hazardous facilities, also grows in importance in the United States. Using the EPA’s Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators score and the U.S. Forest Service’s Wildfire Hazard Potential and the Conditional Risk to Potential Structures, Optimized Hot Spot and risk models with weighted equations were created in ArcGIS. Hot spots for fire risk include more recently developed areas like California, while areas in the Northeast were cold spots. Risk is mainly found in both the West and the South. There is an inherent trade-off between placing facilities in areas where fire risk is low but close to people or placing them in high-fire areas away from people. Making decisions on where high-risk facilities should be placed, and the risks of fires around them is a necessary next step for policymakers.
For more information: saharris1@eckerd.edu