In situ and transmitted housing-unit exposure to wildfire in the Pacific Northwest
At the request of the United States Forest Service Pacific Northwest Regional Office, Pyrologix assessed the exposure of housing units to wildfire in Oregon and Washington. There are two approaches to such an assessment. The first—called an in situ analysis—rates the exposure of housing units where they exist on the landscape. The second approach rates the potential for wildfires originating in one part of the landscape to expose housing units in another. This second approach is often referred to as a wildfire transmission, risk-source, or exposure-source analysis. This report presents results for both approaches.
This work was completed as a companion to the ‘Exposure of human communities to wildfire in the Pacific Northwest’ report (Scott et al., 2018). The purpose of the assessment was to identify the counties and land ownerships on which damaging wildfire tend to occur and originate. These results can be used in wildfire management and mitigation planning by identifying counties with the greatest annual exposure of housing units.
