Fires that matter: reconceptualizing fire risk to include interactions between humans and the natural environment

Increasing fire impacts across North America are associated with climate and vegetation change, greater exposure through development expansion, and less-well studied but salient social vulnerabilities. We are at a critical moment in the contemporary human-fire relationship, with an urgent need to tr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental research letters Vol. 17; no. 4; pp. 45014 - 45025
Main Authors: Iglesias, Virginia, Stavros, Natasha, Balch, Jennifer K, Barrett, Kimiko, Cobian-Iñiguez, Jeanette, Hester, Cyrus, Kolden, Crystal A, Leyk, Stefan, Nagy, R Chelsea, Reid, Colleen E, Wiedinmyer, Christine, Woolner, Elizabeth, Travis, William R
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Bristol IOP Publishing 01.04.2022
Subjects:
Emergency preparedness
Emergency response
exposure
Fire hazards
Fires
firescape
hazard
Identification methods
Natural environment
Risk analysis
Risk factors
social-environmental-technological system
vulnerability
ISSN:1748-9326, 1748-9326
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Increasing fire impacts across North America are associated with climate and vegetation change, greater exposure through development expansion, and less-well studied but salient social vulnerabilities. We are at a critical moment in the contemporary human-fire relationship, with an urgent need to transition from emergency response to proactive measures that build sustainable communities, protect human health, and restore the use of fire necessary for maintaining ecosystem processes. We propose an integrated risk factor that includes fire and smoke hazard, exposure, and vulnerability as a method to identify ‘fires that matter’, that is, fires that have potentially devastating impacts on our communities. This approach enables pathways to delineate and prioritise science-informed planning strategies most likely to increase community resilience to fires.
Bibliography:ERL-113221.R1
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ISSN:1748-9326
1748-9326
DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/ac5c0c