Fire Policy Research Articles

Zero-Burning Policy in Land Preparation: Social Changes and Its Impact on Communities and the Environment

In Indonesia, forest and land fires have become an annual occurrence, with devastating effects. Following major fires in 2015, the government implemented policies restricting the use of fire in land preparation. This policy has affected the livelihoods of traditional farmers who still use fire for land clearing. The research aims to analyze the social changes that have occurred among traditional farmers as a result of the policy to ban burning in land preparation, and to assess its impact. The study was undertaken in Pulang Pisau Regency (Central Kalimantan) and Ogan Komering Ilir Regency (South Sumatera). Findings reveal two types of social transformation processes, namely, changes in agricultural commodities and changes in livelihoods. In general, fire policy restrictions in land preparation improved peatland ecosystems, but has had a detrimental impact on some rural communities living around peatlands. To anticipate these effects, the government promoted no-burn land preparation techniques and initiated a new paddy field construction scheme. However, both were less successful due to local resistance for their unsuitability in the local context.

Maximizing opportunities for co-implementing fuel break networks and restoration projects

Increasing impacts from wildfires are reshaping fire policies worldwide, with expanded investments in a wide range of fuel reduction strategies. In many fire prone regions, especially in the Mediterranean basin, fuel management programs have relied on fuel break networks for decades to facilitate fire suppression and reduce area burned and damage. By contrast, on the fire prone federal forests in the western United States, fuel management is guided primarily by landscape restoration goals, including improving fire resiliency such that wildfires can be managed for ecological benefit, and suppression is used more as a tool to shape burn patterns and less to extinguish fires. New policies in both fire systems are now calling for hybrid approaches that rely on both types of investments and efficient allocation of alternative spatial treatment patterns: linear networks versus patches across the landscape. However, studies that combine these strategies and examine alternative co-prioritization outcomes and potential synergies are largely non-existent. Here, we analyzed scenarios for implementing both types of treatments in concert while varying the prioritization metrics for one type or the other on a western United States national forest. We measured the response related to both treatment strategies including fire intersection rate, improvement in forest resiliency, and net revenue. We found that projects with benefits to both strategies can be identified and mapped independently of the implementation scenario and restoration objective. However, scenarios prioritized for fuel breaks preceding restoration resulted in the identification of more projects that met the criteria for providing dual benefits. The study is a rare example of optimizing hybrid fuel treatment projects that serve both restoration and fire protection goals with different spatial treatment designs.

Climate change and California’s terrestrial biodiversity

In this review and synthesis, we argue that California is an important test case for the nation and world because terrestrial biodiversity is very high, present and anticipated threats to biodiversity from climate change and other interacting stressors are severe, and innovative approaches to protecting biodiversity in the context of climate change are being developed and tested. We first review salient dimensions of California’s terrestrial physical, biological, and human diversity. Next, we examine four facets of the threat to their sustainability of these dimensions posed by climate change: direct impacts, illustrated by a new analysis of shifting diversity hotspots for plants; interactive effects involving invasive species, land-use change, and other stressors; the impacts of changing fire regimes; and the impacts of land-based renewable energy development. We examine recent policy responses in each of these areas, representing attempts to better protect biodiversity while advancing climate adaptation and mitigation. We conclude that California’s ambitious 30 × 30 Initiative and its efforts to harmonize biodiversity conservation with renewable energy development are important areas of progress. Adapting traditional suppression-oriented fire policies to the reality of new fire regimes is an area in which much progress remains to be made.

Indigenous Fire Data Sovereignty: Applying Indigenous Data Sovereignty Principles to Fire Research

Indigenous Peoples have been stewarding lands with fire for ecosystem improvement since time immemorial. These stewardship practices are part and parcel of the ways in which Indigenous Peoples have long recorded and protected knowledge through our cultural transmission practices, such as oral histories. In short, our Peoples have always been data gatherers, and as this article presents, we are also fire data gatherers and stewards. Given the growing interest in fire research with Indigenous communities, there is an opportunity for guidance on data collection conducted equitably and responsibly with Indigenous Peoples. This Special Issue of Fire presents fire research approaches and data harvesting practices with Indigenous communities as we “Reimagine the Future of Living and Working with Fire”. Specifically, the article provides future-thinking practices that can achieve equitable, sustainable, and just outcomes with and for stakeholders and rightholders (the preferred term Indigenous Peoples use in partnerships with academics, agencies, and NGOs). This research takes from the following key documents to propose an “Indigenous fire data sovereignty” (IFDS) framework: (1) Articles declared in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as identified by the author and specified in Indigenous-led and allied Indigenous fire research in Australia, Canada, and the U.S.; (2) recommendations specific to cultural fire policy and calls for research in the 2023 Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission report; (3) research and data barriers and opportunities produced in the 2024 Good Fire II report; and threads from (4) the Indigenous Fire Management conceptual model. This paper brings together recommendations on Indigenous data sovereignty, which are principles developed by Indigenous researchers for the protection, dissemination, and stewardship of data collected from Tribal/Nation/Aboriginal/First Nations Indigenous communities. The proposed IFDS framework also identifies potential challenges to Indigenous fire data sovereignty. By doing so, the framework serves as an apparatus to deploy fire research and data harvesting practices that are culturally informed, responsible, and ethically demonstrated. The article concludes with specific calls to action for academics and researchers, allies, fire managers, policymakers, and Indigenous Peoples to consider in exercising Indigenous fire data sovereignty and applying Indigenous data sovereignty principles to fire research.

Wildfire Management Strategy and Its Relation to Operational Risk

Abstract Changes to US wildfire policy in 2009 blurred the distinction between fires managed for resource benefits and fires with primarily suppression objectives, making management strategies difficult to track. Here, qualitative text is coded from a sample of 282 Wildland Fire Decision Support System Relative Risk Assessments completed on wildfires between 2010 and 2017 to examine the prevalence of different strategies and their associations with risk. Suppression is used most, associated with high risk. Managers discuss intent to suppress even when it is untenable. Monitoring, confine, or point protection are used much less commonly and when risk is low. The Southwest region discusses a diversity of strategies, leveraging landscape barriers from past management to support them; the Northwest discusses suppression or monitoring and rarely links strategy selection to barriers. Based on associations between physical barriers to fire spread, risk, and strategy, creating more barriers may provide a path forward to better implement fire policy. Study Implications: Systematic analysis of text data in wildfire decision documents provides insights into how fires are managed. Most wildfires are still aggressively suppressed despite federal fire policy promoting the use of fire to enhance resources. When managers discuss risk during wildfires, it is evident that physical barriers to fire spread (e.g., rivers, roads, trails, rocky scree), including mechanical fuel treatments, prescribed fires, and previous wildfires, are important factors in operational fire planning. However, management strategies promoting the use of wildfire to enhance ecological resiliency or reduce transmission of future fires to values are used sparingly. Southwest fire managers are relying on past wildfires, fuel treatments, and prescribed fires more so than the Northwest to engage in a full spectrum of fire management strategies. This finding suggests that, at least in some geographies, ongoing investments in fuels management will pay dividends in reducing risk and broadening opportunities to meet federal policy goals.

Assessing policy preferences for preventing and managing wildfire in Greece

Extreme temperatures and droughts have led to catastrophic wildfires across Greece over the last two decades, with 2023 experiencing the largest fire-driven evacuation in the country's history. Existing wildfire governance approaches may be outdated in the face of these new challenges. Greek residents' attitudes and willingness to pay for additional prevention and mitigation may be changing with the increased threat. Because policy design can affect public support and subsequent outcomes, we conducted an online national-level survey of Greek residents (n = 722) with an embedded discrete choice experiment, aimed at assessing preferences and willingness-to-pay for different policy alternatives to address wildfire risk. Our results suggest that, in general, Greek residents are unsatisfied with current fire policy, are willing to pay a small amount for additional fire mitigation efforts aimed to reduce burned areas, and prefer action led by the Greek Forest or Fire Services using awareness and education campaign—for example, fire prevention informative mailers or workshops.

The political ecologies of fire: Recasting fire geographies in British Columbia, Canada

How fires burn across British Columbia (BC), Canada is shaped by settler coloniality, timber capitalism, state forestry regimes, criminalization of burning, and Indigenous resistance. Despite the urgency of confronting the fire suppression paradox embedded in settler colonial fire management laws and practices, approaches to studying fire in Canada that foreground Indigenous law and de-center settler colonial governance is scarce. As political ecologists and geographers working and living in the context of unceded and ancestral lək̓ʷəŋən, W̱SÁNEĆ, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, səlilwətaɬ, and syilx territories, we engage with Indigenous feminist scholarship to expose how coloniality and gender intersect in attempts to erase Indigenous sovereignty to structure and naturalize provincial fire policy and its emplaced impacts on Indigenous legal orders. Our analysis contextualizes settler-colonial provincial fire management policy in the purview of Indigenous legal orders to foreground how racial-colonial and gendered politics are obscured when colonial fire and wildfire practices are naturalized. Revisiting key moments in the political development of fire suppression across so-called BC, we contend that the suppression paradox is embedded in and reproduces a colonial logic that widens existing social and economic gaps. These gaps are uniquely gendered, as settler coloniality operates upon patriarchal lines that have actively attempted to erase Indigenous women and Two-Spirit peoples, including the laws and legal authorities that they possess and practice. Considering the 1910 Fulton Commission, we highlight an example of how women and Indigenous people were excluded from the political decision-making structures that shaped colonial fire management practices in BC. These gendered and racialized exclusions bear directly on the exclusion of Indigenous women and gender-diverse folx, and Indigenous legal orders guided by matriarchal lines of fire knowledge.

Avoiding the blame game: NGOs and government narrative strategies in landscape fire policy debates in Russia

AbstractTo what extent can nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) communicate policy problems in an authoritarian country, and how limited are they in narrating policy alternatives? This article seeks to develop studies on the application of the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) in Russia, extend our knowledge about the use of narrative strategies in centralized and authoritarian policy processes, highlight certain methodological peculiarities related to the devil–angel shift calculation, and test causal mechanism hypotheses that have not previously been applied to the analysis of policy debates in Russia. The study examines hypotheses based on the narrative strategies (devil–angel shift, scope of conflict, and causal mechanisms) that were used by government and NGO coalitions in the debate about “landscape fire” policies in Russia over the period 2019–2021. The results show that the differences between the coalition's narrative strategies were not as significant as had been shown previously. The government coalition uses a strong angel shift in its narratives and avoids conflict expansion. The NGO coalition demonstrates a moderate angel shift, but with the use of conflict expansion in parts of the narratives. Both coalitions use the intentional or inadvertent causal mechanism blaming the citizens for starting the fires, but differ in employing causal mechanisms when discussing the large scale of landscape fires.

How global narratives shape local management: A history of fire in the tropical savannas of Belize and Guyana

AbstractThe suppression of anthropogenic fire is an important legacy of European colonisation worldwide. Fire suppression has undermined human livelihoods and fire‐dependent ecologies. Belize and Guyana are the only former British colonies on the mainland of Central and South America. Both countries have fire‐dependent tropical savanna ecosystems, where fire is used within local livelihoods, for example, for hunting. We compare the creation and implementation of savanna fire suppression and management policies and projects by agencies in twentieth to twenty‐first‐century Belize and Guyana, and the extent to which global environmental narratives have shaped this process. In both countries, a picture emerges of weak state efforts to control fire, largely driven by economic concerns. In colonial Belize, the state made intermittent attempts to suppress or manage savanna fires in limited areas, owing to interest in pine forestry. In Guyana, the colonial state did not attempt to control fires, given economic interest in cattle ranching, and the remoteness of the savannas. Since 2000, both states have developed new fire policies, and state agencies, conservation non‐governmental organisations and Indigenous advocacy groups have won funding for fire‐related projects. We show that these contemporary policies and projects, like those of the colonial period, primarily financed by inconsistent international funding, continue to lean heavily on international discourses about fire that make assumptions about fire problems and propose solutions incompatible with local realities. Understanding the local geography, ecology and politics, and recognising the ways colonial fire legacies altered, and continue to impact these places, could inform more just and productive approaches to working with local fire users in Belize, Guyana and beyond.

Consequential lightning-caused wildfires and the “let burn” narrative

BackgroundCurrent guidance for implementation of United States federal wildland fire policy charges agencies with restoring and maintaining fire-adapted ecosystems while limiting the extent of wildfires that threaten life and property, weighed against the risks posed to firefighters. These ostensibly conflicting goals can make it difficult to clearly communicate specific response objectives of a given incident. Inherent ambiguity can expose land management agencies, like the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS), to scrutiny when once remote, lightning-ignited wildfires burn across boundaries and result in damage. One such incident was the 2021 Tamarack Fire, ignited by lightning in a remote USFS wilderness area and ultimately burning 27,776 ha across multiple jurisdictions and destroying 25 structures. Intense sociopolitical interest developed around this incident, reigniting a “let burn” policy debate of the USFS despite this policy not formally existing. We provide a first approximation at quantifying the base rates of potentially consequently lightning-caused fires like the Tamarack Fire. We use multiple sources of fire-reporting data to characterize USFS fires from 2009 to 2020 by management-strategy to identify Tamarack Fire analogs. Within Incident Command System 209 (ICS-209) reports for fires originating on USFS lands, we identified 32 wildfires with similar key characteristics to the Tamarack Fire; nearly half ignited within wilderness areas.ResultsInitial strategies were driven by resource objectives for only six of the 32 wildfires; firefighter hazard mitigation was the primary driver of all others. No fire exhibited every characteristic of the Tamarack Fire. Analog fires accounted for a small percent (3.4%) of large (> 121 ha) USFS lightning-caused ignitions. These fires were responsible for 61.6% of structures destroyed and 25.8% of total personnel commitments of large lightning-caused USFS fires.ConclusionsLightning-ignited wildfires that could have resulted in sociopolitical controversy are rare, and those with strategies driven by resource objective are even rarer. More commonly, risks posed to firefighters from terrain, snags, or accessibility are factors driving strategy, even when fires ignite within wilderness areas. These results suggest that simple definitions of strategy such as those reported within the ICS-209 lack clarity and may increase sociopolitical pressure on the agency to continue aggressive fire exclusion strategies.

Unraveling the Effect of Fire Seasonality on Fire-Preferred Fuel Types and Dynamics in Alto Minho, Portugal (2000–2018)

Socio-demographic changes in recent decades and fire policies centered on fire suppression have substantially diminished the ability to maintain low fuel loads at the landscape scale in marginal lands. Currently, shepherds face many barriers to the use of fire for restoring pastures in shrub-encroached communities. The restrictions imposed are based on the lack of knowledge of their impacts on the landscape. We aim to contribute to this clarification. Therefore, we used a dataset of burned areas in the Alto Minho region for seasonal and unseasonal (pastoral) fires. We conducted statistical and spatial analyses to characterize the fire regime (2001–2018), the distribution of fuel types and their dynamics, and the effects of fire on such changes. Unseasonal fires are smaller and spread in different spatial contexts. Fuel types characteristic of maritime pine and eucalypts are selected by seasonal fires and avoided by unseasonal fires which, in turn, showed high preference for heterogeneous mosaics of herbaceous and shrub vegetation. The area covered by fuel types of broadleaved and eucalypt forest stands increased between 2000 and 2018 at the expense of the fuel type corresponding to maritime pine stands. Results emphasize the role of seasonal fires and fire recurrence in these changes, and the weak effect of unseasonal fires. An increase in the maritime pine fuel type was observed only in areas burned by unseasonal fires, after excluding the areas overlapping with seasonal fires.

Predicting wildfire ignition causes in Southern France using eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) methods

The percentage of wildfires that are ignited by an undetermined origin is substantial in Europe and Mediterranean France. Forest fire experts have recognized the significance of fires with an unknown ignition source since documentation and research of fire causes are important for creating appropriate fire policies and prevention strategies. The use of machine learning in wildfire science has increased considerably and is driven by the increasing availability of large and high-quality datasets. However, the absence of comprehensive fire-cause data hinders the utility of existing fire databases. This study trains and applies a machine-learning based model to classify the cause of fire ignition based on several environmental and anthropogenic features in Southern France using an eXplainable Artificial Intelligence framework. The results demonstrate that the source of unknown caused wildfires can be predicted at various levels of accuracy/natural fires have the highest accuracy (F1-score 0.87) compared to human-caused fires such as accidental (F1-score 0.74) and arson (F1-score 0.64). Factors related to spatiotemporal properties as well as topographic characteristics are considered the most important features in determining the classification of unknown caused fires for the specific area.

Use of the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) for full suppression and managed fires within the Southwestern Region of the US Forest Service

Background United States federal wildland fire policy requires the use of formal decision support systems (DSS) for fire incidents that last for an extended time. However, the ways that wildfire managers use DSSs in decisions regarding fire management remain understudied, including how users engage with or utilise them to make strategic decisions. Aims Researchers sought to understand how users engage with the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS), their view of its utilities and challenges, and their perspectives about WFDSS training. Methods We present the results of thematic analysis from 46 semi-structured interviews with employees in the US Forest Service Southwestern Region with a WFDSS user account. Key results Users indicated that the program is viewed as efficient for sharing information about wildfires and documenting management decision rationale. They identified emerging gaps in technical proficiency and the need for specialised training that creates high-level users to help guide teams using the program. Conclusions We offer suggestions about continued use of WFDSS including modifications to information distribution, revision of user roles, and expanded support for skills training. Implications Our results suggest that small changes to the WFDSS program and training curriculum may improve the experience of end-users and better match how they are using the program.

Rethinking the focus on forest fires in federal wildland fire management: Landscape patterns and trends of non-forest and forest burned area

For most of the 20th century and beyond, national wildland fire policies concerning fire suppression and fuels management have primarily focused on forested lands. Using summary statistics and landscape metrics, wildfire spatial patterns and trends for non-forest and forest burned area over the past two decades were examined across the U.S, and federal agency jurisdictions. This study found that wildfires burned more area of non-forest lands than forest lands at the scale of the conterminous and western U.S. and the Department of Interior (DOI). In an agency comparison, 74% of DOI burned area occurred on non-forest lands and 78% of U.S. Forest Service burned area occurred on forested lands. Landscape metrics revealed key differences between forest and non-forest fire patterns and trends in total burned area, burned patch size, distribution, and aggregation over time across the western U.S. Opposite fire patterns emerged between non-forest and forest burns when analyzed at the scale of federal agency jurisdictions. In addition, a fire regime departure analysis comparing current large fire probability with historic fire trends identified certain vegetation types and locations experiencing more fire than historically. These patterns were especially pronounced for cold desert shrublands, such as sagebrush where increases in annual area burned, and fire frequency, size, and juxtaposition have resulted in substantial losses over a twenty-year period. The emerging non-forest fire patterns are primarily due to the rapid expansion of non-native invasive grasses that increase fuel connectivity and fire spread. These invasions promote uncharacteristic frequent fire and loss of native ecosystems at large-scales, accelerating the need to place greater focus on managing invasive species in wildland fire management. Results can be used to inform wildfire management and policy aimed at reducing uncharacteristic wildfire processes and patterns for both non-forest and forest ecosystems as well as identify differing management strategies needed to address the unique wildfire issues each federal agency faces.

Examining the existing definitions of wildland‐urban interface for California

AbstractPast studies reported a drastic growth in the wildland–urban interface (WUI), the location where man‐made structures meet or overlap wildland vegetation. Fighting fire is difficult in the WUI due to the combination of wildland and structural fuels, and therefore, WUI areas are characterized by frequent damage and loss of structures from wildfires. Recent wildland fire policy has targeted fire prevention, evacuation planning, fuel treatment, and home hardening in WUI areas. Therefore, it is important to understand the occurrence of wildfire events relative to the location of the WUI. In this work, we have reported the occurrences of wildfires with respect to the WUI and quantified how much of the WUI is on complex topography in California, which intensifies fire behavior and complicates fire suppression. We have additionally analyzed the relative importance of WUI‐related parameters, such as housing density, vegetation density, and distance to wildfires, as well as topographic factors, such as slope, elevation, aspect, and surface roughness, on the occurrence of large and small wildfires and the burned area of large wildfires near the WUI. We found that a very small percentage of wildfire ignition points and large wildfire‐burned areas (>400 ha or 1000 acres) were located in the WUI areas. A small percentage of large wildfires were encountered in WUI (3%), and the WUI area accounted for only 4% of the area burned, which increased to 5% and 56%, respectively, outside WUI (5‐km buffer from WUI). Similarly, 66% of fires ignited outside WUI, whereas only 3.6% ignited within WUI. Results from this study have implications for fuel management and infrastructure hardening, as well as for fire suppression and community response.

Delphi Study on the Management System and Occupational Environment Improvement of SCBA and Charging Rooms

The purpose of this study is to evaluate and suggest priorities for policy implementation to improve the management system and environment of self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) and charging rooms used by firefighters. The study included 15 experts and three interviews, and two modified Delphi surveys were conducted. Based on the results of previous research and expert interviews, the management system and environmental improvement plan for the SCBA and charging rooms were first derived. The improvement plan was presented in five areas, including resources, the SCBA and charging room management system, SCBA related work, SCBA charging room related work, and laws and regulations. The priority of policy implementation was derived by simultaneously analyzing the importance and practicality of the policy. Consequently, the first priority was to add contents to the manual for measures to prevent unwanted drinking of the Han River water and related symptoms for rescue workers during hardship rescue. The second priority was to specify the duty of decontamination in the disaster scene standard handling procedure and disaster scene return procedure stage. The next step was to investigate by conducting education on the risk of health effects of pollutants at disaster scenes. The results of this study can be utilized in the implementation of mid- to long-term fire policies for the systematic operation and establishment of a systematic management system for firefighters’ personal protective equipment, such as SCBA and charging rooms.

Associations between Awareness of the Risk of Exposure to Pollutants Occurring at Fire Scenes and Health Beliefs among Metropolitan Firefighters in the Republic of Korea.

Firefighters are repeatedly exposed to various pollutants that occur at fire scenes. There are three levels of exposure: primary exposure to pollutants, secondary exposure to pollutants on personal protective equipment (PPE), and tertiary exposure to contaminated fire stations and fire engines due to pollutants on PPE. Therefore, it is important for firefighters to be aware of the risk of exposure to pollutants and to practice health behaviors such as appropriate PPE management. No clear association has been established in the existing literature between firefighters’ risk perception level and their health beliefs about the health impact of awareness of exposure to hazardous substances at fire scenes. This study aims to evaluate the relationship between awareness of the exposure risk to primary, secondary, and tertiary pollutants and health beliefs. It was designed as a cross-sectional study, in which a web-based survey was conducted from 13 May to 31 May 2021. The analysis was conducted in 1940 firefighters working in the Seoul metropolis who agreed to participate in the research. Participants who perceived susceptibility were likely to be aware of the primary (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 2.10, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.16–3.80), secondary (AOR = 2.77, 95% CI 1.77–4.32), and tertiary (AOR = 2.73, 95% CI 1.85–4.03) exposure risks. Participants who perceived barriers were unlikely to be aware of the risk of exposure to primary (AOR = 0.67, 95% CI 0.49–0.91), secondary (AOR = 0.77, 95% CI 0.61–0.96), and tertiary (AOR = 0.75, 95% CI 0.62–0.91) pollutants. Educational intervention is recommended to improve perceived susceptibility and awareness of the risk of exposure to pollutants and reduce perceived barriers. Consequently, educational intervention is expected to positively impact firefighters’ management of appropriate PPE. We confirmed an association between occupational exposure risk and firefighters’ health beliefs. In the health belief model (HBM), health beliefs that affect health behavior also affect awareness of the exposure risk level. Therefore, an intervention for health beliefs can also be used to raise job-related exposure risk awareness. Regular training on the health impacts of fire scenes is necessary for both newcomers and incumbents to enable firefighters to better recognize the risks of each occupational exposure level. Additionally, laws and regulations are necessary for the removal of harmful substances that contaminate PPE, such as self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA), during exposure to a fire scene. Our research can be used as a basis for improving fire policies and education programs in the future.

Application Research of Image Processing Technology for Fire Detection and Fire Alarm Based on Blockchain

Aiming at the problems of leakage alarms and false alarms in fire detection systems, this paper explores the commonality and characteristics of its development process through in-depth analysis of typical fire detection and fire alarm modes at home and abroad and effectively summarizes the process of building fire alarms. In the case of fully grasping the principles of fire alarm and related policy protection, find out the appropriate development mode of fire alarm. At the same time, it can also study the perspectives of the government, the market, and the public, according to the needs of the market, it can be driven by industry and technological innovation can be used as a strong support for the development of fire alarm. Finally, the results of example analysis show that: using blockchain, this paper can effectively obtain high-precision fire detection and fire alarm target analysis results, and meet the needs of real-time analysis of fire detection and fire alarm analysis. Experiments show that the system can detect fires correctly and quickly, and identify interference sources such as fluorescent lamps and alcohol lamps. It has strong interference and good economic benefits.

Prometheus Tamed: Fire, Security, and Modernities, 1400 to 1900 by Cornel Zwierlein (review).

Reviewed by: Prometheus Tamed: Fire, Security, and Modernities, 1400 to 1900 by Cornel Zwierlein Edward Tenner (bio) Prometheus Tamed: Fire, Security, and Modernities, 1400 to 1900 By Cornel Zwierlein. Leiden: Brill, 2021. Pp. 547. To scholars and lay people alike, the Enlightenment may mean many things—rejection of revealed religion, celebration of science and reason, and advocacy of human rights. In Prometheus Tamed, Conrad Zwierlein presents a radical reinterpretation of Central European thought and institutions in the transition from the premodern era to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. For Zwierlein, the key to the Enlightenment as a social and political movement lies not in philosophical theory but in a new urgency in the quest for material security. A survey of keywords in German-language periodicals of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reveals a striking amount of attention to fires—a retrospectively obvious point given the tolls on life and property of the conflagrations that so often ravaged early modern cities. In the two decades from 1680 to 1700, Zwierlein finds a decisive turn from an old to a new framework for dealing with fires. Well into the eighteenth century, many pious Christians continued to see fires and other natural hazards as divine punishment for the sins of the community, recalling Sodom and Gomorrah and other Biblical chastisements. The rise of deism—which denied the intervention of the Creator in nature and human affairs—was among the sins said to bring down the wrath of heaven. Governments were already abandoning this religious interpretation of urban fires in the seventeenth century and moving toward an acceptance of their inevitability. Science and experience could reduce the number of fires and contain their damage, and the destruction caused by fires could be mitigated. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz summarized the new attitude when he wrote in 1680 of two kinds of security: "real-assecurationen," which prevented fires, and "verbal-assecurationen," arrangements like insurance policies that provided financial relief from fire losses. Fire policy marked the arrival of a new kind of public policy in the West, a role for the [End Page 925] state and private organizations in providing security—ultimately not only against fire and flood damage but against illness. Fire insurance and firefighting technology were first steps toward a new vision of society. The author's research in both original (including archival) sources and current theoretical issues is nothing short of prodigious, especially in the theory and practice of fire insurance in the early modern German-speaking world. This book will be indispensable for scholars of early modern administrative and urban history and the history of what the author calls the "normal secure society," as well as of innovations in fire prevention and suppression technology. It even contributes to art history in its interpretation of the changing iconography of urban fires. (Some of the most striking images were created by the inventor of the modern fire hose, Jan van der Heyden, an artist-entrepreneur and veritable seventeenth-century Dutch Leonardo, who also improved firefighting pumps and devised street lighting.) There are points at which the legendary thoroughness of the Habilitationsschrift genre may intimidate nonspecialists. The early history of insurance shows that our present idea of insurance arose centuries after the first maritime contracts in Italy, for example the requirement of paying the premium in advance. The discussion of jurists' efforts to squeeze insurance contracts within the framework of Roman law is important for understanding Leibniz's innovations, but details could have been presented in a separate paper for specialists. Conversely, the author does not do justice to some of the better-known figures in the technology and discourse of fire. Benjamin Franklin receives too little attention, despite his contributions to safety technology (lightning rods, improved stoves), fire brigades, and fire insurance, which exemplified the ideas of security that Leibniz had advanced. Voltaire's poem "On the Lisbon Disaster," which mocked Leibniz's optimism in light of that city's devastation by earthquake and fire in 1755, does not appear in the bibliography of published primary sources despite its contemporary impact. The physical book is also a case study in what Thomas Hughes called the reverse salient. Digital printing on demand makes possible a...

A microeconometric analysis of wildfire suppression decisions in the Western United States

Full suppression strategies remain the dominant option in wildfire management, despite a large body of research demonstrating the ecological and economic benefits of allowing unplanned wildfires to burn under favorable conditions. Consequently, empirical research identifying and understanding the factors that contribute to these decisions within public land management agencies has become of critical importance in efforts to improve management outcomes. This paper assesses the importance of a set of institutional and socioeconomic factors with a random utility model of incident commander suppression decisions. We compare the importance of these factors on chosen strategies before and after an update to federal fire policy implementation guidance and an associated change to federal fire budgeting policy implemented in Fiscal Year 2010. We find that while the update to federal fire policy guidance may have been effective at increasing the probability that managers adopted a strategy other than full suppression, the subsequent increase in suppression budget allotments offset this impact, rendering no true difference in probabilities after the policy change.