Social science at the wildland-urban interface: a compendium of research results to create fire-adapted communities

Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting literature to synthesize disparate findings and identify lessons learned across studies. These lessons can then be applied to fostering fire-adapted communities—those communities that understand their risk and have taken action to mitigate their vulnerability and increase resilience. This compendium of social science research findings related to fire-adapted communities has resulted from a project funded by the Joint Fire Science Program. As part of these efforts, the research team reviewed more than 200 publications of research results. Then the team convened a workshop with 16 scientists who evaluated collective findings and discussed their application to support fire management activities. Within this document they describe their approach to completing this review and present key findings from the literature. The discussion is organized around five major topical areas: 1) homeowner/community mitigation, 2) public acceptance of fuels treatments on public lands, 3) homeowner actions during a fire, 4) postfire response and recovery, and 5) wildland fire policy and planning. The compendium concludes with a presentation of management implications and a bibliography of all material in this review.