At risk of fire: Geography of the Wildland-Urban Interface in British Columbia

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The risks and socioeconomic costs of wildfire are expected to continue growing in Canada's wildland-urban interface (WUI) and more generally, the wildland-development interface (WDI). The WUI is a region where human development abuts and intermingles with wildland vegetation, resulting in a risk of wildfire and the loss of property, lives, and livestock. The close proximity of communities to flammable vegetation means the WUI contains the bulk of housing loss due to catastrophic wildfire, for example with over 300 homes in British Columbia destroyed in the historic 2003 fire season. Geographic identification and mapping of the WUI and WDI is critical for allocating suppression resources, conducting multi-scale wildfire threat analysis, and for strategic fuel treatment programs. Our research aims to improve fire risk mapping of the interface of wildlands and human development in British Columbia through innovative spatial analysis using a cost-effective, efficient, and accurate tools. We propose the development and validation of an innovative method for mapping the WUI and WDI based on satellite-based remotely sensed data to contribute to emerging research on integrated strategies for humans to safely coexist with wildfire and meet the geographic needs of our industrial partner, Valhalla Environmental Consulting. Our research products will enable Valhalla to provide strategic information for characterizing fire risk and quantify the magnitude of this human-fire concern over relatively broad spatial scales in an efficient and timely manner. Our partnership with Valhalla has the potential to save money and lives in fire fighting, and move toward a more environmentally sustainable role of fire in Canadian forest landscapes by identifying low-risk areas where fires could be allowed to burn for natural ecosystem gains without socioeconomic costs.