Climate Change
The impacts and challenges of a changing climate have been increasingly visible, most obviously in the form of new and growing threats of wildfires and extended droughts. Representative topics in this area include:
- Impact of climate change on fire safety
-
- Role of climate change in fire hotspots
- Risks or the likelihood of wildfire in warmer, drier and drought conditions
- Longer fire seasons
- Extreme ambient conditions, local demographic characteristics
- Impact of fires on environment
-
- Environmental and health impacts of fire and fire suppression activities
- Flame retardant/extinguishers toxicity
- WUI fire ecology and long-term effect
- WUI fire hazard identification and quantification
- Ecology (post-fire effects - mortality, seasonality, climate change, resilience)
- Remote sensing (pre- and post-burn fuels measurements)
- Understanding fire spread in WUI and urban fires
-
- Fundamental WUI Fire behavior and fire spread
- Impact of WUI firebrands
- Ignition of WUI materials (Human/Natural)
- Common characteristics between fire spread in WUI fires and urban fires
- Smoldering combustion, and sustained burning
- Interaction of local topography, weather, vegetation, and structures
- Applicability of current fuel models for local species
- Flammability data base for native/local species and new materials
- Extreme fire behavior: trench effect, fire whirls, etc.
- Post fire investigation and lessons learnt from WUI fires
- Assessment of design fire scenarios
- WUI risk management (temperature and heat exposure on people and structures)
- Risk assessment
-
- Growth of the Wildland-Urban Interface
- Risk assessment of WUI structures/ Design against exterior building fires
- Risk of combustible fuels/ignition sources in WUI/wildland
- Informal settlements in WUI
- Firefighting/Mitigation/Prevention
-
- Building fire protection in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)
- WUI firebrand ignition prevention
- Impact of WUI on fire service
- Fire fighter safety, Firefighting PPE and tools (Fire Service/Data)
- Strengthening firefighter technology (aerial water/foam-based agents)
- Reliability of
- Water supplies
- Suppression systems failure modes, aging, and complex systems
- Compare/contrast tactics internationally to determine impact of firefighting/construction differences on fire growth/severity
- Model fire department response leading to better models of
- Reverse evacuation
- Egress/ingress
- Duration of water for FP systems
- Structural collapse
- Firefighter response recreation and training aids
- Wildland/WUI fire damage mitigation
- WUI fire remote sensing, warning, and notification/communication
- Advanced tools for planning/response
- Satellite-based information of Vegetation survey, Fire detection, Burnt area
- Firefighter injuries (Fire Service/Risk)
- Safe evacuation and guidance
-
- Human behavior analysis
- Emergency management strategies/Predesignated places
- Educating and preparing the public awareness of WUI fires
- Training about fire prevention and safety for homeowners, land managers and fire agencies
- Cost analysis
-
- Cost of fire events
- Cost of suppression v/s effectiveness v/s risk
- Cost/benefit of different types and multiple levels of FP measures
- Codes and standards
-
- Fire safety regulations improvement/ revision of existing prescriptive codes
- Data to support WUI codes and standards
- WUI specific Performance-based design to meet the objectives of life and property protection
- Existing buildings
- Urban Planning
-
- Landscape planning tools
- WUI resilience design tools
- Safety distances in WUI
- Hazard Maps
- Computational Model
-
- Simulation & Model Prediction
- WUI fire behavior prediction tools
- Wildland/WUI fire modeling
- CFD code Validation