Summary of workshop large outdoor fires and the built environment

Abstract

Large outdoorfires present a risk to the built environment. Wildfires that spread into communities, referred to as Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)fires, havedestroyed communities throughout the world, and are an emerging problem infire safety science. Other examples are large urbanfires including those that haveoccurred after earthquakes. Research into large outdoorfires, and how to potentially mitigate the loss of structures in suchfires, lags other areas offire safety scienceresearch. At the same time, common characteristics betweenfire spread in WUIfires and urbanfires have not been fully exploited. In this paper, an overview of thelarge outdoorfire risk to the built environment from each region is presented. Critical research needs for this problem in the context offire safety scienceare provided.The present paper seeks to develop the foundation for an international research needs roadmap to reduce the risk of large outdoorfires to the built environment.Peer ReviewedPreprin