PREEVENTS Track 2: Understanding Extreme Fire Weather Hazards and Improving Resilience in Coastal Santa Barbara, California

预防措施轨道 2：了解加利福尼亚州圣巴巴拉沿海地区的极端火灾天气危害并提高抵御能力

• 批准号: 1664173
• 负责人: Leila Carvalho
• 金额: $ 150.9万
• 依托单位: University of California-Santa Barbara
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-08-01 至 2023-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1664173&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: PREEVENTS; Track; Understanding; Extreme; Fire; PREEVENTS; Track; Understanding; Extreme; Fire

Wildfires at the wildland-urban interface pose significant hazards to people and the environment and cost billions of dollars. Santa Barbara County in California encapsulates one of the worst wildfire hazard scenarios affecting highly populated areas along the west coast of the United States. A significant portion of the Santa Barbara population resides in mountain areas near canyons and passes in the wildland-urban interface, and are particularly vulnerable to fires during extreme weather conditions. Residents use winding narrow roads to leave these areas, which increases the time needed for mandatory evacuations. Frequent gusty downslope winds accompanied by rapid warming and decreased relative humidity are among the most significant fire weather conditions affecting coastal Santa Barbara. Such conditions have enhanced the severity of 15 major wildfires since 1955. This project will integrate atmospheric, fire spread and transportation models to enhance the current understanding of extreme fire weather regimes and wildfire behavior in the wildland-urban interface in Santa Barbara County. The main goal of the project is to improve existing fire-weather forecast methods, increase resilience, and reduce socioeconomic impacts of wildfires. The project also will improve understanding of the effects of natural hazards and extreme events on societal preparedness in the context of evacuation planning. The results of the project can be applied to many other mountain areas in Southern California where fires present a major hazard. The project will provide key outreach materials for dissemination to government agencies that could be available to the public. Moreover, the project supports the development of new educational courses, and supports the training of graduate students and a postdoctoral investigatorThis project will develop unique approaches to make substantial intellectual advances in a natural hazard problem of high impact to society. The research links fire-weather, fire behavior and evacuation planning and focuses on the coastal area of Santa Barbara County with a population of over 200,000 people. The project will develop a new framework centered on the specific objectives of: 1) understanding synoptic-to-mesoscale mechanisms of downslope windstorms and extreme fire-weather regimes (i.e., gusty winds, low humidity, high temperature and high vegetation fuels), 2) investigating probabilities of fire spread and fire-weather risk at the wildland-urban interface, 3) developing enhanced evacuation strategies using transportation and land use models and 4) carrying on a comprehensive program to transfer research findings to Federal, State and Local Agencies and the community of Santa Barbara. This research will create scenarios to examine evacuation strategies using transportation modeling, significantly enhancing understanding of extreme fire weather regimes on various spatial and temporal scales and improving the present capability to model and forecast these hazardous events.

野火在野火界面界面对人们和环境造成了重大危害，并造成了数十亿美元的危险。加利福尼亚州的圣塔芭芭拉县（Santa Barbara County）封装了影响美国西海岸人口高度地区的最严重的野火危险场景之一。圣塔芭芭拉（Santa Barbara）人口中很大一部分位于峡谷附近的山区，并在野外城市的界面中通过，在极端天气条件下特别容易受到火灾。居民使用蜿蜒的狭窄道路离开这些区域，这增加了强制撤离所需的时间。经常发生的阵风下坡风，伴随着快速变暖和相对湿度的降低是影响圣塔芭芭拉沿海地区的最重要的火灾天气条件之一。自1955年以来，这种条件加强了15种主要野火的严重性。该项目将整合大气，火灾传播和运输模型，以增强对圣塔芭芭拉县野生世界界面的极端火灾天气和野火行为的了解。该项目的主要目标是改善现有的火灾天气预测方法，提高弹性并减少野火的社会经济影响。该项目还将在撤离计划的背景下增强对自然危害和极端事件对社会准备的影响的理解。该项目的结果可应用于南加州的许多其他山区，火灾造成了重大危险。该项目将为向公众提供的政府机构提供关键的宣传材料，以传播政府机构。此外，该项目支持开发新的教育课程，并支持对研究生的培训，而博士后研究员将开发独特的方法，以在对社会产生高影响力的自然危害问题中取得重大智力进步。该研究将火山，火灾行为和疏散计划联系起来，并重点关注圣塔芭芭拉县的沿海地区，人口超过20万人。该项目将开发一个新的框架，该框架以：1）为中心：1）理解垂直于斜坡风暴和极端的火气风格的机制（即，阵阵风，低温，高温和高植被燃料），2）使用火灾的策略和火灾策略3）继续进行一项全面计划，将研究结果转移到联邦，州和地方机构以及圣塔芭芭拉社区。这项研究将创建场景，以使用运输建模来检查疏散策略，从而显着增强对各种空间和时间尺度上极端火灾天气制度的理解，并提高当前的模型和预测这些危险事件的能力。