Abstract

Wildfire Risk Assessment: Economic Impacts of Wildfire for Mitigation Planning
Track: Emergency Medical Services/Fire
Authors: Jason Batchelor, David Buckley

The County of San Diego has embarked on a county wide, all lands wildfire risk assessment. The purpose of the risk assessment is to provide a consistent, quantifiable assessment of wildfire risk that can be used by all fire protection agencies in the county for mitigation and prevention planning.
The risk assessment is being conducted using ArcGIS modeling capabilities integrated with leading fire behavior analysis software based on proven methods currently being applied for a 17-state wildfire risk assessment. The methods have been tailored to address more detailed data and analysis requirements.
The risk assessment results are being delivered as an ArcGIS database supplemented with an ArcGIS 10 custom application. In addition to providing capabilities for re-running the risk models as input data changes in future the ArcGIS application will provide tools for conducting economic impact analysis and ROI for mitigation projects.