ESR7 Project

Earth’s increasing wildfire severity has resulted in historically fire-prone countries struggling to mitigate current wildfire risks and damages, and temperate climate countries facing the challenging need to learn to manage wildfire threats. These trends are observable in Europe; in 2018 northern European countries experienced a burned area increase of a factor between 20 and 200 (Bailey, 2020). Out of the approximate half a million hectares (5000 km2) of yearly burned wildland in Europe, 85% burns in Mediterranean countries (San-Miguel-Ayanz, Schulte, & et.al.). Anthropogenic activities have disrupted the natural wildfire rhythm and caused the current unmanageable wildfire severity trends. The key causes include climate change, fire suppression, and urbanisation. In the Mediterranean, a moderate warming of 1.5℃ is predicted to cause a 40% increase in burned area (Bailey, 2020). Urbanisation has expanded human communities into natural lands; human settlement areas adjacent to, and intermixed with, wildlands are referred to as the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI).

This work investigates pathways of Mediterranean WUI building ignition, to define design recommendations aimed to increase resilience to radiative heat, embers, and smoke. Research has identified vulnerable WUI building features, and developed the defensible space concept to protect from damage by flame impingement and radiation. This thesis, however, focuses on specific Mediterranean building geometries and materials, and the wildfire threats they face (Hakes, Caton, & Gorham, 2017). During the 2017 Portugal Pedrógão Grande Fire, embers ignited over 60% of damaged buildings (Ribeiro, Rodrigues, & Lucas, 2020). This research focuses on ember transport, accumulation, and ignition, as it relates to building survivability. Statistical analysis will be used to identify ignition pathways from post-fire data. FDS computer simulations are generated to define the performance of features under selected wildfire exposure conditions; simulations will be validated through small-scale experiments on material flammability, and large-scale experiments on feature performance.