Tilting the Wildfire Odds

In even the most destructive wildfires, some structures survive untouched while everything around them is incinerated. It begs the question: What factors are most responsible for determining if a home is destroyed or survives during these events? A team of researchers spent years trying to answer that important question. They gathered massive troves of data from California's most destructive wildfires, then used artificial intelligence machine learning to analyze what factors make the biggest difference in home survivability. On today's podcast, we talk to wildfire researcher and study co-author Michael Gollner about what the team found out, how they did it, and how this valuable information will be used. We also discuss whether AI is changing the way we study and think about wildfire. LINKS: Read the wildfire research paper we discussed in this episode. Read the NFPA Journal article about this project Learn more about the Firewise USA program at NFPA