While the wildland-urban interface (WUI) is not a new concept, fires in WUI communities have rapidly expanded in frequency and severity. The number of fatalities and structures lost per year has drastically increased, due in part to increased development in rural areas, fuel management policies, and climate change, all of which are projected to increase in the future. Modeling the transition between fire spread in wildland fuels into WUI communities is of great interest to the fire research community; however, there are many challenges before this goal can be achieved. In this talk, a review of the mechanisms governing both wildland and WUI fire spread will be presented, including new research in both areas. Available knowledge and techniques that currently exist will be reviewed and opportunities for future modeling presented. Finally, the opportunities WUI fire modeling unlocks, such as refined risk assessment, community design, and emergency response will also be covered.
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Michael Gollner
Dr. Michael Gollner is an Associate Professor and Deb Faculty Fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He was previously an Associate Professor of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD from 2012-2019. Dr. Gollner studies how fires ignite and spread within the wildland-urban interface (WUI), the physics and dynamics of wildland fire spread, the processes by which structures ignite from embers, and emissions and associated health effects from wildfire smoke. Highlights from this work include discovering new physical mechanisms of wildfire spread, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and authoring the two leading reviews on how fires spread into and within communities in Fire Technology and Progress in Energy and Combustion Science. This research has been funded by the US Forest Service, the National Science Foundation, the National Fire Protection Association, the National Institute for Standards and Technology and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Dr. Gollner has authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications in leading international journals and over a hundred other presentations, articles, and reports related to these topics.
Dr. Gollner is a former Treasurer and current member of the Board of Directors for the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF), past Chair of the Research Advisory Board of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Fire Protection Research Foundation, and an elected member of the Management Committee of the International Association for Fire Safety Science. He is also a member of a Technical Review Committee (TRC) for CAL FIRE to review and provide comments to the State of California on its impending revised model for Fire Hazard Severity Zones (FHSZ). He serves as Associate Editor for the journal Fire Technology and is on boards for Fire Safety Journal and the International Journal of Wildland Fire. He has been awarded the NSF CAREER award, Tsuji Early Career Award by the Combustion Institute, Proulx Early Career Award in Fire Safety Science, and the Fire Protection Research Foundation Medal.
