A holistic social-ecological systems resilience approach based on performance-based wildfire engineering

Abstract

Abstract The recent worldwide increase of large, uncontrolled, and catastrophic wildfires events, caused important socio-economic issues and with considerable effects to the natural environment. Wildfires’ impacts on social-ecological systems derive from the complicated and multidimensional interconnected relationships between society and ecosystems. To enforce environmental and community resilience against wildfires, it is critical to holistically comprehend the local social-ecological systems. In this paper we present a holistic social-ecological systems resilience approach, built on performance-based wildfire engineering, that is envisioned to be a steppingstone towards the social-ecological resilience after a wildfire. To attain this objective, the performance assessment and design series of actions are disaggregated into explicit components of a rigorous mathematical framework. They are linked to a causal inference chain, providing an integrated picture, and enabling decision analysis to identify the optimal management strategies given a number of constraints. The proposed approach is proceeding from the total probability theorem and divides the risk assessment into single (underlying) parts, particularly: (1) hazard (wildfire) analysis, (2) damage analysis, (3) loss analysis, and social-ecological (4) impacts characterization, (5) interaction analysis, and (6) impacts analysis. A consistent probabilistic framework is proposed that explicitly considers and quantifies the inherent uncertainties for reliable wildfires performance resilient assessment. The suggested framework can be implemented by emergency agencies directly for performance assessment of society and ecosystems recovery after a wildfire, making more effective the emergency management and policy making.