Predicting Wildfire Impacts on Mobility Using GIS and Fire Simulation

Abstract

The USDOT Strategic Plan underscores the importance of improving the mobility of people and goods through its focus on infrastructure. This is particularly important in times of natural disasters. Oregon’s status as the largest timber producer in the United States, combined with the dry climate during fire season and myriad other factors, has resulted in large-scale forest fires that threaten the many logging towns east of Interstate 5. Many of the towns that are vulnerable to wildfires are accessible by roadways that fires could easily cut off, thus blocking aid to and evacuation from these towns. The spread of wildfires can significantly affect the roadway network through damage to infrastructure and the accumulation of roadway debris, preventing access for first responders and the evacuation of people. This project provided a framework to quantify the damage sustained by roadways in terms of the lengths and sections of roadways affected and to identify routes around impacted sections of roadway. A simulation-based methodology was used to model wildfire spread, and geospatial analysis was used to identify roadway sections that would be affected by the fire. This methodology was implemented for a case study of the Archie Creek Fire that occurred in Oregon in 2020. It is expected that this project will help improve the decision-making process by enabling the analysis and estimation of roadway sections and their lengths impacted by wildfires. The results of this project can also help with resource allocation before fires by identifying particularly critical and vulnerable towns and the roadways connecting them. Finally, the developed framework can also be used to estimate evacuation times and to estimate recovery operation durations after wildfires