Activities per year
Abstract
We undertook a 6-month, NERC-funded scoping study of Wildfire Threat Analysis (WTA) to test its suitability for a UK forest-urban interface. Threat here is a cumulative combination of three GIS modules: Risk of Ignition (RoI); Hazard (head fire intensity, rate of spread); and Values at Risk (VaR).RoI and VaR modules were successfully developed for a 11x12 km area around Crowthorne/Swinley Forest, where a major fire occurred in May 2011. Guided by expert knowledge at two stakeholder workshops, we adapted the New Zealand WTA framework, producing a data catalogue of > 90 GIS layers. RoI scores were assigned to public access and land cover layers using geo-locations of Incident Recording System vegetation fires and expert elicitation. Lack of suitable fire climate data prevented a Hazard module from being developed. Using stakeholder knowledge, a 25m cell size RoI map and three VaR maps (infrastructure/property, ecosystem services and social vulnerability) were produced from weighted combinations of layers. Taken together, hotspots requiring management were identified.The WTA framework should be tested for other types of UK rural-urban interface, and at coarser scales up to the 2km grid at which probabilistic fire severity data is available. Fine Fuel Moisture Code could be included as a scaling factor within a national RoI model to give spatially-distributed estimates for probability of sustained ignition.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | host publication |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
Event | Met Office 2nd Wildfire Workshop - Met Office, Exeter Duration: 3 Dec 2014 → 4 Dec 2014 |
Conference
Conference | Met Office 2nd Wildfire Workshop |
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City | Met Office, Exeter |
Period | 3/12/14 → 4/12/14 |
Keywords
- wildfire risk
- forest fire
- rural-urban interface
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Wildfire Threat Analysis in a UK Forest-Urban Interface'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Activities
- 2 Oral presentation
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Mapping and managing wildfire risk the UK: geospatial science and knowledge exchange
Mcmorrow, J. (Invited speaker)
23 Feb 2017Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation › Research
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Wildfire threat analysis in the forest-urban interface – a scoping study for the Swinley forest area
Mcmorrow, J. (Speaker) & Gazzard, R. (Speaker)
13 Nov 2014Activity: Talk or presentation › Oral presentation › Research