PREEVENTS Track 2: Understanding Extreme Fire Weather Hazards and Improving Resilience in Coastal Santa Barbara, California

荒地-城市交界处的野火对人类和环境构成重大威胁，并造成数十亿美元的损失。加利福尼亚州的圣巴巴拉县概括了影响美国西海岸人口稠密地区的最严重的野火危险情景之一。圣巴巴拉的很大一部分人口居住在峡谷和荒地-城市交界处的山口附近的山区，在极端天气条件下特别容易发生火灾。居民使用蜿蜒狭窄的道路离开这些地区，这增加了强制疏散所需的时间。频繁的阵风下坡，伴随着快速变暖和相对湿度下降，是影响沿海圣巴巴拉的最严重的火灾天气条件之一。自1955年以来，这种情况已经加剧了15起重大野火的严重性。该项目将整合大气、火灾传播和交通模型，以加强目前对圣巴巴拉县荒地-城市交界处极端火灾天气状况和野火行为的了解。该项目的主要目标是改进现有的火灾天气预报方法，提高复原力，并减少野火的社会经济影响。该项目还将在疏散规划方面提高对自然灾害和极端事件对社会备灾的影响的了解。该项目的结果可以应用于南加州的许多其他山区，那里的火灾构成了主要的危险。该项目将提供关键的宣传材料，分发给政府机构，供公众使用。此外，该项目还支持开发新的教育课程，并支持对研究生和博士后研究员的培训。该项目将开发独特的方法，在对社会产生重大影响的自然灾害问题上取得实质性的智力进步。这项研究将火灾天气、火灾行为和疏散规划联系起来，重点关注人口超过20万的圣巴巴拉县沿海地区。该项目将围绕以下具体目标开发一个新的框架：1)了解下坡风暴和极端火灾天气制度(即阵风、低湿度、高温和高植被燃料)的天气到中尺度机制，2)调查野地-城市交界处火灾传播的可能性和火灾天气风险，3)利用交通和土地利用模型制定改进的疏散策略，4)实施一项综合计划，将研究成果转移到联邦、州和地方机构以及圣巴巴拉社区。这项研究将利用交通建模创建场景来检查疏散策略，显著增强对各种空间和时间尺度上的极端火灾天气状况的理解，并改进目前对这些危险事件进行建模和预测的能力。

Wildfires at the wildland-urban interface pose significant hazards to people and the environment and cost billions of dollars. Santa Barbara County in California encapsulates one of the worst wildfire hazard scenarios affecting highly populated areas along the west coast of the United States. A significant portion of the Santa Barbara population resides in mountain areas near canyons and passes in the wildland-urban interface, and are particularly vulnerable to fires during extreme weather conditions. Residents use winding narrow roads to leave these areas, which increases the time needed for mandatory evacuations. Frequent gusty downslope winds accompanied by rapid warming and decreased relative humidity are among the most significant fire weather conditions affecting coastal Santa Barbara. Such conditions have enhanced the severity of 15 major wildfires since 1955. This project will integrate atmospheric, fire spread and transportation models to enhance the current understanding of extreme fire weather regimes and wildfire behavior in the wildland-urban interface in Santa Barbara County. The main goal of the project is to improve existing fire-weather forecast methods, increase resilience, and reduce socioeconomic impacts of wildfires. The project also will improve understanding of the effects of natural hazards and extreme events on societal preparedness in the context of evacuation planning. The results of the project can be applied to many other mountain areas in Southern California where fires present a major hazard. The project will provide key outreach materials for dissemination to government agencies that could be available to the public. Moreover, the project supports the development of new educational courses, and supports the training of graduate students and a postdoctoral investigatorThis project will develop unique approaches to make substantial intellectual advances in a natural hazard problem of high impact to society. The research links fire-weather, fire behavior and evacuation planning and focuses on the coastal area of Santa Barbara County with a population of over 200,000 people. The project will develop a new framework centered on the specific objectives of: 1) understanding synoptic-to-mesoscale mechanisms of downslope windstorms and extreme fire-weather regimes (i.e., gusty winds, low humidity, high temperature and high vegetation fuels), 2) investigating probabilities of fire spread and fire-weather risk at the wildland-urban interface, 3) developing enhanced evacuation strategies using transportation and land use models and 4) carrying on a comprehensive program to transfer research findings to Federal, State and Local Agencies and the community of Santa Barbara. This research will create scenarios to examine evacuation strategies using transportation modeling, significantly enhancing understanding of extreme fire weather regimes on various spatial and temporal scales and improving the present capability to model and forecast these hazardous events.