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EDS Seminar Series

Ensuring public safety in fire-prone communities: the rise of dire scenarios

EDS Seminar Speaker Series. Tom Cova discusses ensuring public safety in fire-prone communities: the rise of dire scenarios 

Title: Ensuring public safety in fire-prone communities: the rise of dire scenarios

Speaker: Tom Cova, Center for Natural & Technological Hazards, Department of Geography, University of Utah

Abstract: Ensuring public safety in wildfire-prone communities is a growing challenge. Drought, extreme wind events, and exurban development are yielding scenarios that allow much less time to protect residents. While these dire scenarios often begin with an ignition near a community, any scenario can become dire due to changing weather conditions, official decision making, warning system reliability, delayed public response, and poor community design. This talk will present a framework for defining, understanding, and planning for increasingly dire wildfire scenarios. The broad goal is to encourage officials and communities to consider more challenging scenarios that inspire novel protective planning.

Bio: Tom Cova is Professor of Geography at the University of Utah. His research and teaching interests are environmental hazards, emergency management, transportation, and geographic information science (GISci). His primary research focus is wildfire evacuation analysis and planning.