Introduction

Florida possesses a unique set of characteristics that make much of the State highly susceptible to wildfire. The State is blessed with an abundance of wildlands. The State has also experienced an influx of new residents into these wildlands, creating an intermingling of urban settlement within wildlands and increasing need for wildfire protection services.

Florida's weather is conducive to starting and spreading numerous and sometimes large wildfires. Florida’s rate of lightning strikes is unequaled in the Nation. Lightning, coupled with extended periods of drought, set the stage for catastrophic fire episodes. Whereas lightning accounts for a large proportion of wildfire ignitions, human-caused fires are increasing as the population rises.

Florida’s wildland vegetation evolved in a fire ecosystem. The vegetation is adapted to burn periodically. Fine fuels, which are easily ignited and spread fire rapidly, are abundant throughout Florida. The lack of managed fire in much of the wildlands has promoted an accumulation of these fuels that can burn with high intensity and be difficult to control.

To reduce the risk to life and property loss from wildfire, communities and fire management organizations are encouraged to actively manage wildland fire risk. Managing wildland fire risk can be challenging as fuels frequently change across the landscape and through time. Fire behavior can be affected by changes in land development policies, fuels, weather conditions, and topography. In addition, many social, technical, and institutional barriers to proactive fire-risk management and planning frequently exist.

Florida’s fire managers face a complex problem of managing wildfire risk that is compounded by increasing fire intensities due to accumulation of vegetative materials, continued residential growth into wildland fire-prone areas, and increasing firefighting costs. To address this problem, the Florida Division of Forestry (FDOF) initiated a process to assess fire risk and the values to be protected. The process developed (the Florida Fire Risk Assessment, or FRA) provides managers with a strategic view of the State to improve public safety and protect them from property losses like those experienced in 1985, 1989, 1998, and 1999.

The purpose of the FRA is to identify the potential for wildfires within the State of Florida and prioritize areas where mitigation options may be desirable. The FRA can also be used to locate areas within the State where interagency planning may be of value to effectively manage wildland fire risk. The results can be used to complete a more detailed analysis at the local level and communicate wildland fire management issues to the public.

The objective of this case study is to present the risk assessment methodology and results from the Southern Wildfire Risk Assessment (SWRA) (Buckley and others 2006) for the State of Florida. We start by describing the methods involved in defining our index of wildland fire risk, which we call Level of Concern, based on its major components wildland fire susceptibility and fire effects. We then describe the construction of a fire response accessibility index. Finally, we discuss how, in Florida, the fire risk and fire response accessibility indices are being used and applied to improvement in fire protection decisions.