Abstract

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Background: Due to recent increases in wildfire spread and community mobilization challenges in British Columbia, there are growing concerns about local wildfire preparation, mitigation, and recovery. There is a need to develop system-level frameworks to predict and respond to wildfires at the community level, and vulnerability assessment is an integral step in this process. The aim of this project was to create a vulnerability index for different fire regions across the province.

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Methods: This framework followed a stepwise approach to develop three indices of exposure, sensitivity, and coping capacity for wildfires in British Columbia, based on work previously done by Oliveira et al. (2018) in two Mediterranean regions. Data on population density, road networks, physical infrastructure, vegetation, protected areas, and fire and surveillance stations from two fire regions were integrated to create each index and mapped onto a base grid in ArcGIS©. For the final model, the indices were weighted and rasterized to create a composite vulnerability index map.

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Results: The resulting maps show the influence of population distribution, protected areas and fuel coverage, and fire service areas on wildfire vulnerability in the neighboring Cariboo and Kamloops fire regions in southeast British Columbia.

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Discussion: As a proof of concept exercise, this project demonstrates the adaptability of a stepwise approach to variable selection and index development in ArcGIS© to varying local contexts. The vulnerable regions highlighted in these maps align with known regions of high wildfire occurrence, and this model would benefit from further development and application to other regions in British Columbia.