Effect of treatments on wildfire risk exposure to critical infrastructure

Wildfire risk to something of value on the landscape (e.g., water resources, infrastructure assets) arises from three factors: susceptibility of the resource or asset to wildfire effects, hazard represented by the fuel conditions at or near the resource or asset, and the potential for wildfire to spread from other parts of the landscape to the location of the resource or asset. A strategic approach to risk reduction would therefore target all three factors by identifying highly valued resources and assets, reducing their susceptibility to damage or loss where possible, modifying fuel conditions where hazard can be effectively reduced at the location of the resources and assets, and implementing landscape-scale fuel treatments with sufficient size and spatial patterns to disrupt the growth of large fires under extreme conditions and decrease the probability of fire reaching any particular resource or asset.  A metric from quantitative risk analysis that accommodates all these factors is known as the expected net value change. It can be calculated for any particular resource or asset using the current condition of fuels on the landscape or any post-treatment fuel condition scenario. In this project we apply this metric to evaluate current risk and the potential for different fuel treatment strategies to reduce risk. Work will first be directed toward evaluating the potential to reduce wildfire risk to critical infrastructure assets on the ten initial Wildfire Crisis Strategy landscapes. We will then work to expand application to both include other resources and assets and cover all landscapes in the western U.S.

Objectives

1. National maps of critical infrastructure will be assembled from existing data sources.  These include Electric transmission lines – high & low voltage, Communications sites, power plants, Power substations, Oil & Natural Gas Wells, Natural Gas Pipelines, Hospitals, Emergency, Services, Homes or buildings.
2. National maps of vegetation types where fuel treatments are effective at changing fire behavior.  Working in conjunction with the interagency LANDFIRE program, RMRS has previously identified a list of LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation Types (EVTs) where proper fuel treatments can durably change fire behavior LANDFIRE databases contain logic on how fuel characteristics change with different types of treatment and disturbance
3. National maps of wildfire risk to infrastructure defined as annualized expected loss following standard quantitative risk analysis.  As part of the same risk assessment referenced in #1, a national map of the “expected Net Value Change” (eNVC) to infrastructure assets already exists. This is a raster geospatial dataset with 30m pixels, where the values are annualized expected loss to infrastructure assets.
4. Project-scale maps of infrastructure and wildfire exposure for the 10 priority landscapes accounting for changes from proposed and accomplished treatments for future time periods.  There are two approaches.  The simplest (4a) accounts only for effects of treatments around infrastructure but does not account for changes in wildfire probability, wildfire sizes or transmission.  Here, infrastructure eNVC can be summarized by the Fireshed polygons (or other units) for deliverable #3 to provide a baseline in the 10 initial investment landscapes. Then, maps depicting the change in eNVC from treatments in deliverable #2 would be recalculated accomplished and/or proposed treatments on the post-treatment landscape.   The second approach (4b) addresses changes in exposure for infrastructure assets (probability of fire impact) resulting from wildfire transmission across the landscape. That type of assessment would require running the more complex and time-consuming FSim model on the post-treatment landscapes.
5. Expanded application of analytical methods to include other resources and assets and other geographic areas within the United States.  The processes described in #4 will be extended to other areas of the US and include highly valued resources and assets beyond just critical infrastructure.
6. Development of a repeatable analytical framework for fuel treatment design and evaluation that incorporates quantitative wildfire risk analysis and can be efficiently implemented across the National Forest System.  The processes described in #4 will be developed into end-user tools for landscape analysis of changes in wildfire risk. 

Expected Project Results 

Outputs:

This project will apply a consistent risk-based approach to evaluating the wide variety of impacts to infrastructure which can be extended to other critical values such as water resources, timber, and habitat and across all lands.  The flexible methodology allows for evaluating different strategic spatial fuel treatment plans developed collaboratively with field units and the Project Layout and Design team.  The metrics evaluated by this project for reduced risk to infrastructure will also inform the monitoring protocols produced by the Monitoring and Measuring team.  With multi-year investment, the existing tools and methods will be developed into an application platform useable by fire analysts in the National Forest System.  This platform will be cloud-based and employ custom algorithms to evaluate fire weather and fire behavior and calculate relevant risk-based metrics before and after treatment. This will allow analysts to harness datasets and computing power in the cloud to efficiently assess alternative treatment scenarios and evaluate their effectiveness in changing risk to specified resources and assets.

Expected Outcomes:

General outcomes from this project will be a process by which NFS fire analysts can evaluate the expected outcome performance of landscape treatment alternatives for reducing risk to infrastructure and wildland values.  This process has been demonstrated repeatedly over the past two decades by research efforts in multiple Forest Service regions, but the lack of end-user tools inhibits the application of the process throughout the Forest Service and other agencies.  

Metrics of Success:

The metric of success in this project will be the deployment of risk analysis tools for evaluating fuel treatment performance in reducing wildfire risk to infrastructure and wildland values. The natural scales of application are across broad landscapes defined by the extent of wildfires.  In fact wildfire risk originates with large fires and thus cannot be examined quantitively (as expected loss) without considering the landscape extent of large fires and their growth across heterogeneous fuel and terrain conditions with varying weather scenarios.  Thus, the success of this project for national forest units, the general public, and Congress will be the ability to explain and characterize the effectiveness of different treatment alternatives to alter wildfire risk to specific resources and assets of interest.