Research & Science

An important element of the CPAW program is to grow the larger body of knowledge supporting land use planning and wildfire mitigation in the wildland-urban interface. Through our work with communities, we highlight tools, share methods, and focus on technical topics such as development standards, fire behavior, landscape regulations, and fire risk modeling. At the request of communities, CPAW team members with Headwaters Economics conduct original research on a wide variety of topics and disseminate findings in peer-reviewed publications, reports, and articles, as well as professional conferences. To present our research, we use unique online interactives and data visualization tools.

Research examples include:

• Report on Building a Wildfire-Resistant Home: Codes and Costs
• Report on the Full Community Costs of Wildfire
• Data visualization of structures destroyed by wildfire, searchable by state
• Interactive map of communities threatened by wildfire
• Case studies on Land Use Planning to Reduce Wildfire Risk from five urban areas
• Wildfire and Vulnerable Populations Tool for Austin, TX
• Analysis of new Montana homes in areas of high wildfire hazard
• Summary of Montana Planning Tools to reduce wildfire risk