Social science at the wildland-urban interface: a compendium of research results to create fire-adapted communities

Abstract

Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire. Building on a relatively small number of foundational studies, this research now addresses a wide range of topics including mitigation activities on private lands, fuels reduction treatments on public land, community impacts and resident behaviors during fire, acceptance of approaches to postfire restoration and recovery, and fire management policy and decisionmaking. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting literature to synthesize disparate findings and identify lessons learned across studies. These lessons can then be applied to fostering fire-adapted communities-those communities that understand their risk and have taken action to mitigate their vulnerability and increase resilience. This compendium of social science research findings related to fire-adapted communities has resulted from a project funded by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP). As part of these efforts, the research team reviewed more than 200 publications of research results. Then the team convened a workshop with 16 scientists with extensive experience in the human dimensions of fire management issues. Workshop participants evaluated collective findings and discussed their application to support fire management activities. In addition to this compendium, project outputs were: 1) a synthesis of published literature specific to eight management questions identified by the JFSP, 2) a list of future research needs, 3) a bibliography, including abstracts, with accompanying subject area guide, and 4) a video featuring the experiences of agency personnel and community leaders in successful collaborative fire planning settings. This video is accompanied by a field guide for use by agency managers to more effectively participate in building fire-safe communities. In the sections that follow, we describe our approach to completing this review and present key findings from the literature. Our discussion is organized around five major topical areas: 1) homeowner/community mitigation, 2) public acceptance of fuels treatments on public lands, 3) homeowner actions during a fire, 4) postfire response and recovery, and 5) wildland fire policy and planning. The compendium concludes with a presentation of management implications and a bibliography of all material in this review.

Community Wildfire Preparedness: a Global State-of-the-Knowledge Summary of Social Science Research

“…However, as wildfires have had growing societal impacts, interest and funding for understanding the role of social factors in shaping fire management outcomes has grown markedly and a significant body of research has begun to develop. An initial synthesis of what could be learned from articles published between 2000 and 2008 was developed [2] and then refined into two longer syntheses based on the literature published between 2000 and 2010 [1,3]. This article builds on the findings from that work to take into account what has been learned from the fairly substantial number of articles that have been published since 2010.…”

“…Prior to 2000, studies examining social response were sporadic [1]. However, as wildfires have had growing societal impacts, interest and funding for understanding the role of social factors in shaping fire management outcomes has grown markedly and a significant body of research has begun to develop.…”

Using community archetypes to better understand differential community adaptation to wildfire risk

“…It provides great insight into how management strategies can address wildfire risk and engender local support or action to that end [5,34]. However, close examination of that literature, and especially recent trends, demonstrates a particularly strong bent towards deductive strategies for understanding or predicting individual human behaviour.…”

“…The concept of 'fire adapted', which has long been used by ecologists in reference to certain plant associations, is now being applied to human communities in the WUI as a means to advance management of fire as a coupled social and ecological system [33,34]. The moniker of 'fire-adapted communities' (FACs) organizes disparate programmes and the broader goal of fostering local community or individual response for fire mitigation under a new and more comprehensive banner.…”

“…To summarize, an FAC will be better off than a less well adapted one at living with and managing fire, and will exercise more agency to affect its own fate if and when an unwanted fire event occurs. In addition, the extent to which communities can manage their own fire risk is likely to reduce in some proportion the effort and expense outside agencies need to expend in defending communities when fires occur [33,34].…”