Modeling and mapping dynamic vulnerability to better assess WUI evacuation performance

Abstract

SummaryWildland‐urban interface (WUI) fire incidents are likely to become more severe and will affect more and more people. Given their scale and complexity, WUI incidents require a multidomain approach to assess their impact and the effectiveness of any mitigation efforts. The authors recently produced a specification for a simulation framework that quantifies evacuation performance during WUI incidents including inputs from three core domains: fire development, pedestrian performance and vehicular traffic [26]. This framework could produce new insights by simulating evolving conditions of WUI incidents based on developments and interactions between the core components. Thus, it aims to overcome known limitations of previous approaches (eg, static assessment, single domain approaches, or lack of projection), as well as to provide explanatory insights into the outcomes produced by the simulation. The proposed framework would also advance geo‐spatial mapping of WUI incidents. The concept of dynamic vulnerability, , is at the core of the framework and is enabled by the integrated simulation framework and the emergent conditions predicted. This allows users to construct richer incident narratives from the perspective of specific locations or subpopulations, and also makes fewer simplifying assumptions regarding interactions between the three core domains.