Mapping root causes for locational catastrophic wildfire risk

Catastrophic wildfire is a complex problem, with root causes which can include fuel loading and historical fire exclusion, climate change, landscape management practices, fuels treatment accessibility, wildland-urban interface buildout, area suppression capacity, ingress and egress accessibility, parcel defensible space maintenance, building codes and existing stock maintenance, utility equipment maintenance and management, and many others. All of these are in themselves knotty problems to overcome, with each understandably getting receiving a great deal of specialized attention and focus from different concerned stakeholders. When developing wildfire protections however, there can be temptation to apply a given favored mitigation to many or all on-ground high-risk circumstances.

The key research question: Geospatially identify and/or collect biggest root cause drivers of catastrophic wildfire risk in locations throughout California. Develop a framework to so that the one or few most critical locational risk drivers are known, to enable better tactical matching of mitigation(s) with a given geographic location’s most critical risk driver(s).