Sponsors

Pascale Vacca, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain

 

Short biography: Dr Pascale Vacca is a postdoctoral researcher and assistant lecturer at the Chemical Engineering Department of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), where she is a member of the Centre for Technological Risk Studies (CERTEC). She holds a PhD from UPC, with a thesis titled “Fire Risk Analysis Framework at the Wildland-Urban Interface”. Her research focuses on developing Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) and Wildland-Industrial Interface (WII) fire risk and vulnerability assessments. She investigates wildfire impact and its consequences at both community and parcel (i.e., home-owner) scales. At UPC, she is involved in the teaching of fire science and risk and safety related courses both at Bachelor’s and Master’s levels, including the course on “Risk and Vulnerability at the Wildland-Urban Interface”.

 

Short Summary: Recent WUI fires have highlighted the growing management challenges posed by the vulnerability of WUI environments. The WUI fire problem is inherently complex, as it is characterized by the interaction of multiple phenomena of diverse nature occurring at different observation scales: the macroscale or landscape scale, the mesoscale or settlement scale and the microscale or homeowner scale. All three are interrelated and need to be taken into account when studying WUI fire phenomena. Risk reduction strategies are thus needed at the three scales.
This lecture provides an overview of the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) specificities when it comes to ignition and fire spread mechanisms as well as vulnerabilities of the built environment, along with the definition of WUI fire risk, addressing its components (hazard, exposure and vulnerability) at the three scales. Current WUI fire risk assessment frameworks will also be analysed, aligning with an Integrated Fire Management approach that considers the interaction among all phases of disaster risk management cycle.