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Despite large commitments of personnel and equipment to wildfire suppression, relatively little is known about the factors that affect how many resources are ordered and assigned to wildfire incidents and the variation in resources across incident…
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Uncertainties are pervasive in natural hazards, and it is crucial to develop robust and meaningful approaches to characterize and communicate uncertainties to inform modeling efforts. In this monograph we provide a broad, cross-disciplinary overview…
Author(s): Karen L. Riley, Matthew P. Thompson, Peter Webley, Kevin D. Hyde
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The Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture faces a future of increasing complexity and risk, pressing financial issues, and the inescapable possibility of loss of human life. These issues are perhaps most acute for wildland fire management,…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Donald G. MacGregor, David E. Calkin
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Risk management is being increasingly promoted as an appropriate method for addressing wildland fire management challenges. However, a lack of a common understanding of risk concepts and terminology is hindering effective application. In response,…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Tom Zimmerman, Dan Mindar, Mary A. Taber
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Determining the degree of risk that wildfires pose to homes, where across the landscape the risk originates, and who can best mitigate risk are integral elements of effective co-management of wildfire risk. Developing assessments and tools to help…
Author(s): Joe H. Scott, Matthew P. Thompson, Julie W. Gilbertson-Day
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How wildfires are managed is a key determinant of long-term socioecological resiliency and the ability to live with fire. Safe and effective response to fire requires effective pre-fire planning, which is the main focus of this paper. We review…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Phil Bowden, April Brough, Julie W. Gilbertson-Day, Alan H. Taylor, Jessica R. Haas
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Ongoing challenges to understanding how hazard exposure and disaster experiences influence perceived risk lead us to ask: Is seeing believing? We approach risk perception by attending to two components of overall risk perception: perceived…
Author(s): Patricia A. Champ, Hannah Brenkert-Smith
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Wildfire risk in temperate forests has become a nearly intractable problem that can be characterized as a socioecological 'pathology': that is, a set of complex and problematic interactions among social and ecological systems across multiple spatial…
Author(s): A. Paige Fischer, Thomas A. Spies, Toddi A. Steelman, Cassandra Moseley, Bart R. Johnson, John D. Bailey, Alan A. Ager, Patrick S. Bourgeron, Susan Charnley, Brandon M. Collins, Jeffrey D. Kline, Jessica E. Leahy, Jeremy S. Littell, James D.A. Millington, Max W. Nielsen-Pincus, Christine Olsen, Travis B. Paveglio, Christopher I. Roos, David M. J. S. Bowman
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A quantitative measure of wildfire risk across a landscape-expected net change in value of resources and assets exposed to wildfire-was established nearly a decade ago. Assessments made using that measure have been completed at spatial extents…
Author(s): Joe H. Scott, Matthew P. Thompson
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Research across a variety of risk domains finds that the risk perceptions of professionals and the public differ. Such risk perception gaps occur if professionals and the public understand individual risk factors differently or if they aggregate…
Author(s): James R. Meldrum, Patricia A. Champ, Hannah Brenkert-Smith, Travis Warziniack, Christopher M. Barth, Lilia C. Falk
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Wildland fire management faces unprecedented challenges in the 21st century: the increasingly apparent effects of climate change, more people and structures in the wildland-urban interface, growing costs associated with wildfire management, and the…
Author(s): Robert L. Olson, David N. Bengston, Leif A. DeVaney, Trevor A.C. Thompson
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Applying wildfire risk assessment models can inform investments in loss mitigation and landscape restoration, and can be used to monitor spatiotemporal trends in risk. Assessing wildfire risk entails the integration of fire modeling outputs, maps of…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Jessica R. Haas, Julie W. Gilbertson-Day, Joe H. Scott, Paul G. Langowski, Elise M. Bowne, David E. Calkin
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Wildfires present a complex applied risk management environment, but relatively little attention has been paid to behavioral and cognitive responses to risk among public agency wildfire managers. This study investigates responses to risk, including…
Author(s): Michael S. Hand, Matthew J. Wibbenmeyer, David E. Calkin, Matthew P. Thompson
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We develop a novel risk assessment approach that integrates complementary, yet distinct, spatial modeling approaches currently used in wildfire risk assessment. Motivation for this work stems largely from limitations of existing stochastic wildfire…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Julie W. Gilbertson-Day, Joe H. Scott
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In the age of Big Data we often believe that our predictions about the future are better than ever before. But as risk expert Gerd Gigerenzer shows, the surprising truth is that in the real world, we often get better results by using simple rules…
Author(s): Gerd Gigerenzer
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Wildfires are a global phenomenon that in some circumstances can result in human casualties, economic loss, and ecosystem service degradation. In this article we spatially identify wildfire risk transmission pathways and locate the areas of highest…
Author(s): Jessica R. Haas, David E. Calkin, Matthew P. Thompson
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Wildland firefighting is an inherently dangerous activity, and aviation-related accidents in particular comprise a large share of firefighter fatalities. Due to limited understanding of operational factors that lead to aviation accidents, it is…
Author(s): Crystal S. Stonesifer, David E. Calkin, Matthew P. Thompson, Jeffrey D. Kaiden
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Fire-prone landscapes are not well studied as coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and present many challenges for understanding and promoting adaptive behaviors and institutions. Here, we explore how heterogeneity, feedbacks, and external…
Author(s): Thomas A. Spies, Eric M. White, Jeffrey D. Kline, A. Paige Fischer, Alan A. Ager, John D. Bailey, John P. Bolte, Jennifer Koch, Emily K. Platt, Christine Olsen, Derric B. Jacobs, Bruce A. Shindler, Michelle M. Steen-Adams, Roger B. Hammer
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Characterizing wildfire risk to a fire-adapted ecosystem presents particular challenges due to its broad spatial extent, inherent complexity, and the difficulty in defining wildfire-induced losses and benefits. Our approach couples stochastic…
Author(s): Joe H. Scott, Don Helmbrecht, Matthew P. Thompson
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Stochastic simulations of wildfire occurrence and growth have become an integral part of both wildfire incident management and land management planning applications. The FSPro simulation system, implemented in the online Wildland Fire Decision…
Author(s): Joe H. Scott
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