Abstract
Wildland fires are some of the critical natural hazards that pose a significant threat to the communities located in the vicinity of forested/vegetated areas. In this paper, our overall objective was to study the structural damages due to the 2016 Horse River Fire (HRF) that happened in Fort McMurray (Alberta, Canada) by employing primarily very high spatial resolution optical satellite data, i.e., WorldView-2. Thus, our activities included the: (i) estimation of the structural damages; and (ii) delineation of the wildland-urban interface (WUI) and its associated buffers at certain intervals, and their utilization in assessing potential risks. Our proposed method of remote sensing-based estimates of the number of structural damages was compared with the ground-based information available from the Planning and Development Recovery Committee Task Force of Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB); and found a strong linear relationship (i.e., r2 value of 0.97 with a slope of 0.97). Upon delineating the WUI and its associated buffer zones at 10 m, 30 m, 50 m, 70 m and 100 m distances; we found existence of vegetation within the 30 m buffers from the WUI for all of the damaged structures. In addition, we noticed that the relevant authorities had removed vegetation in some areas between 30 m and 70 m buffers from the WUI, which was proven to be effective in order to protect the structures in the adjacent communities. Furthermore, we mapped the wildland fire-induced vulnerable areas upon considering the WUI and its associated buffers. Our analysis revealed that approximately 30% of the areas within the buffer zones of 10 m and 30 m were vulnerable due to the presence of vegetation; in which, approximately 7% were burned during the 2016 HRF event that led the structural damages. Consequently, we suggest to remove the existing vegetation within these critical zones and also monitor the region at a regular interval in order to reduce the wildland fire-induced risk.
Highlights
Wildland/forest fires are some of the critical natural hazards that pose a significant threat to the communities located in the vicinity of forested/vegetated areas around the world [1,2,3]
The classes were extreme risk, very high risk, high risk, medium risk, and low risk based where on-stand forest/trees were existed within wildland-urban interface (WUI) to 10 m, 10 to 30 m, 30 to 50 m, 50 to 70 m and 70 to 100 m buffer area respectively. We considered those areas as very low risk, which were greater than 100 m away from WUI or where there were no presence of standing forest/trees between the WUI and 10 to 100 m buffer zones
In the scope of this paper, we demonstrated the effectiveness of using Worldview-2 in developing a wildland fire-induced risk modelling framework and applied for the comprehension of the 2016
Summary
Wildland/forest fires are some of the critical natural hazards that pose a significant threat to the communities located in the vicinity of forested/vegetated areas around the world [1,2,3]. These fires, have an enormous impact on the urban/built environment adjacent to the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Those include: (i) interruption of usual activities of the residents [4]; (ii) destruction of buildings and other infrastructures [5]; (iii) evacuation of people [5,6]; (iv) degradation of air quality [6]; and (v) psychological traumatization of the people [7,8], among others.
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