Planning Wildfire Protection for the Santa Monica Mountains: An Economic Analysis of Alternatives

North, D. Warner; Offensend, Fred L.; Smart, Charles N.

doi:10.1007/978-3-0348-5288-3_10

Cited by 6 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Our conclusion on the importance of roof type and brush clearance in minimizing expected cost plus loss from wildland fires in an area near Los Angeles (North, Offensend, & Smart, 1975) has not been challenged, but rather confirmed in the past 45 years. This summer of 2020, four million acres have been burned, and over 5,000 buildings have been destroyed.…”

Section: Wildland Firesmentioning

confidence: 65%

Risk Analysis, Decision Analysis, Causal Analysis, and Economics: A Personal Perspective from More Than 40 years Experience

North

2020

Risk Analysis

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I entered the field of risk analysis forty years ago from a background in physics followed by doctoral training and experience in decision analysis. I came into the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) after participating as a committee member in the 1983 National Academies report, Risk Assessment in the Federal Government: Managing the Process. The insights and recommendations from this report, and successor reports from 1996 and 2008, merit revisiting on this 40th anniversary. Risk analysis includes risk assessment, a process of summarizing applicable science to inform decisions; and risk management, a process of making informed choices, usually involving multiple stakeholders. Inherent in both is the need to deal with complexity, uncertainty, and differing perspectives and goals. The lessons I have learned include the need for a conceptual separation of risk management from risk assessment, the benefit of an iterative dialogue between these activities, and the wisdom of articulating and assessing what we know, what we want, and what we can do as we seek to understand and manage risks affecting ourselves and those we advise.

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Section: Wildland Firesmentioning

confidence: 65%

Risk Analysis, Decision Analysis, Causal Analysis, and Economics: A Personal Perspective from More Than 40 years Experience

North

2020

Risk Analysis

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“…Examples of these include the possibility of seeding hurricanes threatening the coasts of the United States (Poward et al 11972]). metropolitan airport development in Mexico City (de Neufville and Keeney 1i972]), protection from wildland fires (North et al, [1975]), trajectory selection for the Mariner Jupiter/Saturn project (Dyer and Miles [1976]). and the evaluation of busing alternatives to achieve school integration (Edwards [19801), Several Bv their nature, significant environmental problems concern both government and industry.…”

Section: S Applications Of Decision Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision Analysis: State of the Field.

Keeney¹

1982

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“…Quantitative wildfire risk assessments (QWRAs) offer an integrated raster-based mapping of potential risk across an entire landscape [15,16]. As a complement to QWRAs, decision analytic frameworks-such as decision trees-allow risk managers to explore the available options and to confront the scientific, social, and political uncertainties that result in tradeoffs in the prioritization of those options, by estimating probabilities for a range of possible outcomes, represented as the right-most nodes on a decision tree [4,[17][18][19][20][21][22]. Decision frameworks are thus used to assess overall risk mitigation associated with available risk management strategies and their likely consequences [4,[17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As a complement to QWRAs, decision analytic frameworks-such as decision trees-allow risk managers to explore the available options and to confront the scientific, social, and political uncertainties that result in tradeoffs in the prioritization of those options, by estimating probabilities for a range of possible outcomes, represented as the right-most nodes on a decision tree [4,[17][18][19][20][21][22]. Decision frameworks are thus used to assess overall risk mitigation associated with available risk management strategies and their likely consequences [4,[17][18][19][20][21][22]. This paper presents a case study to offer an improved methodology for utilizing the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) in conjunction with a decision analytic approach that elevates the quality of risk analysis and the risk management process and offers comprehensive insight into the tradeoffs associated with different fuel treatment options.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision Support for Landscapes with High Fire Hazard and Competing Values at Risk: The Upper Wenatchee Pilot Project

Skinner,

Prichard,

Cullen

2024

Fire

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Background: Climate change is a strong contributing factor in the lengthening and intensification of wildfire seasons, with warmer and often drier conditions associated with increasingly severe impacts. Land managers are faced with challenging decisions about how to manage forests, minimize risk of extreme wildfire, and balance competing values at risk, including communities, habitat, air quality, surface drinking water, recreation, and infrastructure. Aims: We propose that land managers use decision analytic frameworks to complement existing decision support systems such as the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System. Methods: We apply this approach to a fire-prone landscape in eastern Washington State under two proposed landscape treatment alternatives. Through stakeholder engagement, a quantitative wildfire risk assessment, and translating results into probabilistic descriptions of wildfire occurrence (burn probability) and intensity (conditional flame length), we construct a decision tree to explicitly evaluate tradeoffs of treatment alternative outcomes. Key Results: We find that while there are slightly more effective localized benefits for treatments involving thinning and prescribed burning, neither of the UWPP’s proposed alternatives are more likely to meaningfully minimize the risk of wildfire impacts at the landscape level. Conclusions: This case study demonstrates that a quantitatively informed decision analytic framework can improve land managers’ ability to effectively and explicitly evaluate tradeoffs between treatment alternatives.

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Planning Wildfire Protection for the Santa Monica Mountains: An Economic Analysis of Alternatives

Cited by 6 publications

References 1 publication

Risk Analysis, Decision Analysis, Causal Analysis, and Economics: A Personal Perspective from More Than 40 years Experience

Risk Analysis, Decision Analysis, Causal Analysis, and Economics: A Personal Perspective from More Than 40 years Experience

Decision Analysis: State of the Field.

Decision Support for Landscapes with High Fire Hazard and Competing Values at Risk: The Upper Wenatchee Pilot Project

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