Remember that your comments and questions are due by noon on Monday before class. This provides enough time for our discussion leads to synthesize questions.
I look forward to our discussion.
Wildfire evacuation and response
Please enter at least three discussion questions based upon the assigned readings for this week. The structure of your questions and comments is up to you. Consider making recommendations about best practices for evacuation notification or coordination. Feel free to respond to other student posts and extend their ideas if you wish.
Remember that your comments and questions are due by noon on Monday before class. This provides enough time for our discussion leads to synthesize questions.
I look forward to our discussion.
Remember that your comments and questions are due by noon on Monday before class. This provides enough time for our discussion leads to synthesize questions.
I look forward to our discussion.
Forrister et al. 2024
ReplyDeleteDelay time for evacuation is mentioned and is said to be due to factors like children and other members of a household that require further preparation activities. What are the best ways that you believe officials can better pin-point households that have an increased delay time? What can be done to reduce delay times before a wildfire occurs (i.e. instructing residents to have emergency packs ready with necessities)?
Li et al. 2019
What do you believe can be done so that models can better encapsulate occurrences such as logical decision-making not always taking place during the panic of a wildfire event or lapses in evacuation protocols? Therefore, there may be a better portrayal of how evacuations may actually occur. Do you think that these models have accounted well for this?
Stasiewicz and Paveglio 2021
Regarding individuals who want to stay and defend their homes in the face of a wildfire, the paper said they were more likely to include individuals who performed mitigation measures. What types of mitigation measures do you think make individuals more confident that they can defend their homes compared to other measures? It would be interesting to see the rationale behind their choice to stay and defend.
Stasiewicz & Paveglio:
ReplyDeleteAre there differences in planned evacuation behavior and mitigation actions that can be generalized across communities? (e.g. more dense neighborhoods closer to the lakes v. larger, more rural properties farther away from the lakes)?
Forrister:
One question I have is about the sampling methods used for this study. Recruitment via Facebook, Twitter, and Qualtrics, and all the participants were provided “incentives” (payments?). Are these good/standard sampling techniques? Also, the total number of responses was 191, which potentially seems low (especially for an urban/suburban area like this)?
Li:
Would more granular, perhaps household-level, data be useful for understanding and predicting evacuation behavior and possibly facilitating household-level warnings? Would this be practical/feasible?
Forrister:
ReplyDelete- The Marshall fire occurred in winter, outside of the normal wildfire season for the area. Do you think this had a role in resident risk perception?
- Gatlinburg, TN is largely a tourist town. How do you think risk perception, evacuation decision, and delay time might differ between tourists and residents?
Li:
Aside from traffic simulation, what local factors should go into an evacuation time estimate? Can these be modeled, or is human judgement necessary to account for human factors?
Stasiewicz and Paveglio:
From a public safety perspective, the desired outcome is that residents have Firewise mitigation efforts in place AND that they evacuate early. However, the article presents these two elements as contradictory. Those that mitigate are more likely to stay and defend, rather than evacuate, and those that evacuate early may feel a sense of apathy towards mitigation.
How do we maximize public safety? Do you think early evacuation should be the goal? Or would a truly fire-adapted community be able to remain in place and withstand a fire front?
Stasiewica & Paveglio:
ReplyDeleteThe question that first comes to mind reminds me of last week, was there a follow up to see if the residences intended behavior was actually followed through and was their plan effective and to what degree where these “mitigations” efforts to make them feel confident enough, to stay to defend?
Li:
I found this paper, pretty that they’re not putting human behavior. Anyone who has been in a scary/disaster scenario knows that unexpected behaviors are triggered. an example would be here’s the evacuation model everyone follow it. However, say a wildfire is getting close to the local school and parents (in a panic) flood the area trying to get their children, throwing the evacuation model out the window and causing major congestion and delayed evacuation times.
Forrister:
I wonder if there’s a better way to notify people. For example, somebody moving into an area that doesn’t have the knowledge of a perceived risk, Or the local authorities communication preferences, and known platforms. How old does official communication become official for everyone to receive it? I feel like that would help with evac. delays and help people take it more seriously
Li et al. 2019: This study does not factor in residents who refuse to evacuate and instead choose to “stand and defend” their properties. How might this impact the studied scenarios (considering some of those who choose to “stand and defend” end up leaving later on, associated fire and police personnel trying to get those people to evacuate, etc.)? Additionally, this study also doesn’t take into account the impacts of fire personnel entering the fire/community area while residents are trying to evacuate. How might these additional vehicles impact traffic patterns and evacuation times, safety, etc.?
ReplyDeleteStasiewicz and Paveglio 2021: Given this paper states that “Many residents demonstrated support for a wait and see approach, with 32.0% moderately agreeing and 26.2% strongly agreeing that they would wait and see how bad a wildfire was and evacuate if they thought it was too dangerous.”, how can these residents really know when it is time to leave/too dangerous to stay at their homes without any firefighting experience? How might we better educate on this topic when wildfires and associated timing, trigger points, etc. are so dynamic and decisions surrounding these are largely experience-based? Additionally, on that same note, “Residents in the SD category reflected intentions to remain at home and help defend their properties by putting out spot fires.”- but how might they know how to adequately accomplish this without firefighting experience? Further, how might these experiences compound upon one another and make it difficult for a resident who has chosen to stay and defend and is actively working to put out spot fires to recognize that they are in over their head and need to leave?
Forrister et al. 2024: How can we better account for (and positively build upon) the effects of residents’ previous experiences with wildfire when it comes to their willingness to evacuate (again)? To elaborate, often times when residents have evacuated in wildfires previously but ended up receiving little to no damage to their property, they often are hesitant to evacuate again in subsequent wildfires (due to a number of factors- thinking they could’ve done a better job with their own property protection than firefighters, reluctance due to the hassle of evacuating again, having a negative experience with being evacuated last time (hotel costs, lack of resources, etc.). How can we ensure that instead of reluctance to evacuate again, we can better promote a better willingness to leave to allow firefighters the space, safety, lack of safety concern for residents, etc to best do their jobs?
Additionally, how can we better teach the public about “fire cues” they should be on the lookout for?
Paveglio:
ReplyDeleteThe author states, "Our results suggest that there are opportunities to address those challenges by striking a balance between trying to protect at-risk populations and encouraging them to be part-ners in reducing potential risks during complicated wildfire evacuations." What would this relationship look like? What opportunities can be taken advantage of?
Forrister:
How would local agencies fund and run programs to show importance of fire? Who would fund them? Would it be best to standardize this, or would allowing local experts who know the landscape to create the programs be better?
Li:
How could factoring in citizens in different locations (ie. Grocery Store, Schools, In the Office) affect the travel congestion? Are these citizens more likely to go home to collect their items before evacuating? Or will they be more likely to immediately follow evacuation protocol?
1. Should and how might fire professionals communicate that it is not firefighters' sole responsibility to protect property during an active event ? What existing social norms may challenge this message? What factors, beyond mastery experiences, influence residents perceived self efficacy in SD practices?
ReplyDelete2. To what extent do current evacuation plans account for human behavior and error? How can smoke impacts (e.g., visibility) and additional hazards be better integrated into planning efforts? Should there be a standardized requirement for household evacuation routes (e.g., at least two per residence), and if so, who would be responsible for enforcing it?
3. How effective are mobile alerting platforms compared to traditional, low-tech communication methods in emergency evacuations? Is there an over-reliance on these platforms? How do communication preferences influence evacuation strategies and decision-making?
Forrister et al. 2024:
ReplyDeleteWhen describing the methods, the authors "...replaced missing values (including 'I don't know or don't remember' and 'I prefer not to answer this question' responses) with imputed values." What are the imputed values that they used to replace these statements?
Stasiewicz and Paveglio 2021:
What were the characteristics that got this study area labeled as "socially fragmented"? Was it their beliefs in the evacuation process or land use?
Li et al. 2019:
How can we increase the accuracy of results from simulations knowing that human behavior is not consistent?
Stasiewicz and Paveglio 2021:
ReplyDeleteDoes the ideal solution to evacuation look the same for a homeowner as it does a fire manager? Is there common ground?
Li et al. 2019:
What other applications could this traffic simulation be implemented in? Does this simulation account for seasonal population (summer / part-time homeowners)? How practical is this to utilize in any given fire? I thought of a lot of potential “hole in the story” scenarios.. Wildfire is so dynamic and ever changing? Do we really feel that these models can output valuable data?
Forrister et al. 2024:
How can we use the information from the results and conclusion to help influence further change?