Abstract
Accurate maps of the wildland–urban interface (WUI) are critical for the development of effective land management policies, conducting risk assessments, and the mitigation of wildfire risk. Most WUI maps identify areas at risk from wildfire by overlaying coarse-scale housing data with land cover or vegetation data. However, it is unclear how well the current WUI mapping methods capture the patterns of building loss. We quantified the building loss in WUI disasters, and then compared how well census-based and point-based WUI maps captured the building loss. We examined the building loss in both WUI and non-WUI land-use types, and in relation to the core components of the United States Federal Register WUI definition: housing density, vegetation cover, and proximity to large patches of wildland vegetation. We used building location data from 70 large fires in the conterminous United States, which cumulatively destroyed 54,000 buildings from 2000 through to 2018. We found that: (1) 86% and 97% of the building loss occurred in areas designated as WUI using the census-based and point-based methods, respectively; (2) 95% and 100% of all of the losses occurred within 100 m and 850 m of wildland vegetation, respectively; and (3) WUI components were the most predictive of building loss when measured at fine scales.
Highlights
The rapid development and expansion of the wildland–urban interface (WUI) into areas with highly-flammable vegetation has significantly increased the potential for building loss during wildland fires [1,2,3,4,5]
Wildfires can impact WUI communities in multiple ways, we focused on building loss because, at its core, community wildfire risk has been described as a home ignition problem, with building loss being responsible for the majority of economic loss during WUI disasters [9,10]
WUI disasters were identified through the inclusion of only those wildfires that reported more than 50 destroyed buildings, which is similar to the thresholds used by others [9,10]
Summary
The rapid development and expansion of the wildland–urban interface (WUI) into areas with highly-flammable vegetation has significantly increased the potential for building loss during wildland fires [1,2,3,4,5]. Recent wildfire losses in the United States, Australia, and Spain have highlighted the global nature of this phenomenon [6]. In the United States, which has seen extensive losses in the 2020 fire season, there are currently an estimated 1.7 million residences in areas at high or extreme risk of wildfire [8], the majority of which are in the WUI. Wildfires that cause substantial building loss are known as WUI disasters [9]. The increased fuel loading in fire-adapted ecosystems due to historical fire suppression practices [9], increased residential development and
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