Wildfire Risk

The continuing encroachment of human settlements into fire-prone areas and extreme fire seasons in recent years make it urgent that we better understand both the physical and human dimensions of managing the risk from wildfire. Wildfire Risk follows from our awareness that increasing public knowledge about wildfire hazard does not necessarily lead to appropriate risk reduction behavior. Drawing heavily upon health and risk communication and risk modeling the authors advance our understanding of how individuals and communities respond to wildfire hazard. They present results of original research on the social economic and psychological factors in responses to risk discuss how outreach and education can influence behavior and consider differences among ethnic/racial groups and between genders with regard to values views and attitudes about wildfire risk. They explore the role of public participation in risk assessment and mitigation as well as in planning for evacuation and recovery after fire. Wildfire Risk concludes with a dedicated section on risk-modeling with perspectives from decision sciences geography operations research psychology experimental economics and other social sciences.