Pre-Conference Webinars

Pre-Summit Webinars

Webinar: Integrating WUI Risk Management into the Fire Safety Engineering Practice - Challenges & Opportunities
March 3 | Presenter: Pascale Vacca, PhD, CERTEC  

As Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires are posing great management challenges in terms of civil protection and fire loss mitigation, the creation of fire-adapted communities that can safely co-exist with wildfires has become a growing necessity. This 2026 WUI Fire Engineering Summit pre-conference webinar covers how Fire Safety Engineers can contribute to enhance WUI fire safety and resilience in alignment with the Disaster Risk Management cycle, along with existing methodologies when it comes to quantitative WUI fire risk assessment, which are applied to a case study located at the WUI of the city of Barcelona (Spain).

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WUI Codes and Standards in Global Perspective: A Panel Discussion from Australia, United States, and Canada

May 26 | Moderator: Shamim Rashid-Sumar, PE, SFPE President

Panelists:

Noureddine Bénichou, National Research Council of Canada
Alexander Filkov, University of Melbourne
Justice Jones, International Code Council

 As Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires grow more common across the globe, prescriptive codes and standards play a role in reducing risk to communities. This 2026 WUI Fire Engineering Summit pre-conference webinar will highlight codes and standards in Australia (Construction of Buildings in Bushfire-Prone Areas), United States (International Wildland-Urban Interface Code), and Canada (National Guide for Wildland-Urban Interface Fires).  Moderated by SFPE President Shamim Rashid-Sumar, a panel of experts from around the globe will share perspectives on WUI codes and the regulatory environment.

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WUI Fire Health Impacts: Smoke & Emissions

July 14 | Moderator: Augustin Guibaud, New York University

Panelists:

David Eisenman, University of California, Los Angeles
Jamie McAllister, Halliwell Fire Research
Mark Wilson, UL Chemical Insights Research Institute 

 As Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires grow more common across the globe, the short-term and chronic physical and mental health impacts from WUI products of combustion can be felt in communities near and far from the fires. The pollutants produced by WUI fires are different than those of bushfires/wildfires. This webinar is the final in a series of three pre-Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fire Engineering Summit webinars. Moderated by Augustin Guibaud of IgNYte at New York University, a panel of engineering, medical, and public health experts from academia and industry, will share their latest research on the impacts of WUI fires on community health. 

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Other Free WUI On-Demand Webinars

SFPE Foundation has funded WUI related research, which has been highlighted in its webinar series Research In Fire Engineering. These webinars are available on-demand for free.

The SFPE Foundation led a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Fiscal Year 2023 Fire Prevention & Safety Grant-funded project to assess advanced training needs for the U.S. fire service that can be addressed with engineering-based resources. Three webinars were developed by subject matter experts to address Community Evacuation Planning, Community Notification, and Fire and Evacuation Modeling for Communities.  These three webinars are available for free.  

Wildland-Urban Interface: Community-Level Notification and Evacuation Plans Webinar (SFPE Foundation)
Presenter: David Wolf, Golden Fire Department and Joseph Shellhammer, Larimer County Sherriff's Office 

This webinar will focus on the community planning required to plan and implement a community evacuation. It was developed to ensure agencies have a sufficient foundation to prepare for a significant natural or human caused event which may require a full or partial community evacuation. The webinar will outline key relationships to be built for successful operations, offer lessons learned from community evacuations in Colorado and Tennessee, and provide a framework for conducting a community assessment and building notification and evacuation plans.

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Two On-Demand Webinars Coming Soon:

Wildland-Urban Interface: How to Structure Effective Messages Webinar (SFPE Foundation)

Presenter: Erica Kuligowski, PhD, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University

Wildland-Urban Interface: Integration of Fire and Evacuation Modelling at Community-Level​ Webinar (SFPE Foundation)

Presenter: Steve Gwynne, PhD, University of Greenwich