Human Dimensions of Fire
Access brief.
This study specifically surveyed county emergency managers; the individuals who are responsible for mitigating and responding to disaster events. The results suggest that emergency managers are subject to decision biases and by knowing this, we can improve emergency management and decision-making processes.
View report.
This collection of essays—divided into three key categories: Risk, Culture, and Operations—daylights qualities and practices in the wildland fire service across a broad spectrum, from outdated and unwarranted to honorable and profound. We must acknowledge our current culture and its shortcomings while using its strengths to lead change.
View study.
This study found that emergency managers exhibit some of the same decision biases, sensitivity to framing, and heuristics found in studies of the general public, even when making decisions in their area of expertise. A national survey of county-level emergency managers finds that managers appear more risk averse when the outcomes of actions are framed as gains than when equivalent outcomes are framed as losses, a finding that is consistent with prospect theory. The study also found that the perceived actions of emergency managers in neighboring jurisdictions affect the choices a manager makes. In addition, our managers show evidence of attribution bias, outcome bias, and difficulties processing numerical information, particularly probabilities compared to frequencies. Each of these departures from perfect rationality points to potential shortfalls in public managers’ decision making. There are opportunities to improve decision making through reframing problems, providing training in structured decision-making processes, and employing different choice architectures to nudge behavior in a beneficial direction
View article.
This study, which can be found in the journal PLoS One, suggests that people of color, especially Native Americans, face more risk from wildfires than whites. It is another example of how the kinds of disasters exacerbated by climate change often hit minorities and the poor the hardest.
View report.
The flow of ecosystem services derived from forests and grasslands in the Southwestern United States may change in the future. People and communities may be vulnerable if they are exposed, are sensitive, and have limited ability to adapt to ecological changes. Geospatial descriptions of ecosystem services, projected climate-related ecological changes, and socioeconomic conditions are used to assess socioeconomic vulnerability to changes in the provision of ecosystem services by national forests and grasslands in the Southwest. Vulnerability is uneven in the Southwest due to varying projected effects of climate on forest ecosystem services, and different levels of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of people in the region.
Access brief.
The Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service’s “Eastside Restoration Strategy” aimed to improve forest health conditions by accelerating the pace and scale of restoration on national forests in eastern Oregon and Washington. As part of this effort, the Regional Office created a dedicated interdisciplinary Blue Mountains Restoration Strategy Team (ID Team) to conduct landscape-level planning across four national forests and innovate strategies to more effectively reach planning decisions. We conducted interviews with 25 key informants, observed meetings, analyzed documents, and worked with an advisory group to understand transferrable insights from the project.
Access brief.
The WUI is often synonymous with fire risk to buildings, but this research suggests that this is not the case in all fire-prone states. While fire outreach was often present near areas where buildings are destroyed by wildfire, many communities are established after major fires.
View article.
Collaborative forest management efforts often encounter challenges related to process and stakeholder relationships. To address these challenges, groups may employ the services of coordinators and facilitators who perform a range of tasks in support of the collaborative. We sought to understand differences between facilitation and coordination in terms of trust creation and maintenance. We conducted case studies in four collaborative groups, one with a facilitator and three with coordinators. We highlight the trust-building practices unique to the facilitator and discuss the potential implications for future collaborative groups.
Visit Cal Fire wildfire preparedness website.
Many resources are available on preparing and preventing wildfire and living and coping after wildfire.
View article.
This article examines findings from a 2016 study on gender and leadership within the British Columbia Wildfire Service (BCWS), Canada. The study utilized action research to facilitate an in-depth conversation among wildland firefighters about gender and leadership, and to explore participant-derived actions steps within the BCWS towards a perceived ideal future(s). The study found widespread occurrences of gender discrimination in the day-to-day practice of leadership, and that gender made a difference for wildland firefighters’ experiences of normative workplace culture. In their practice of leadership, participants described a trade-off between gender diversity and excellence. The article concludes that the practice of leadership within wildland fire must include open dialogue about, and strategic engagement with, gendered cultural norms within the workplace in order to dispel myths and latent beliefs, and support what firefighters in this study defined as ‘excellent leadership’.