UC Santa Barbara

Interest in and funding for wildfire risk mitigation to protect people and property are more prominent than ever. Climate change, urbanization, and expanded human activity have increased the risk and impacts of wildfire in the wildland-urban interface and make it critical that sound strategies are identified to help people better coexist with fire and other natural disasters. There is significant research focused on different elements of wildfire, but there are important limitations around a lack of consideration of spatial relationships and interactions, quantitative decision making support, and high-resolution analysis of social and socioeconomic variation in wildfire vulnerability. This dissertation extends current understanding of wildfire risk and best practices for risk reduction at the parcel, neighborhood, forest, and regional scales. The use of spatial optimization, statistical, and GIS methods are employed to prioritize risk reduction actions and assess existing tools. This work helps decision makers reduce wildfire risk through allocation of resources and development of targeted and individualized policies while considering space, balancing multiple management goals, and incorporating social diversity of communities.