University of Ottawa

Purpose

This part of the project addresses the modelling of the resource allocations and the resident safety platform in communities threatened by WUI fires. Existing tools for emergency evacuation modeling and resource planning have weaknesses including: • Current support tools do not meet emergency services’ decision support needs. • Most existing resource optimization tools are single-stage planning only (i.e., they do not address resident relocation and resource deployment), ignoring the multi-stage character of Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires. • Integrated solutions for evacuation modelling and resource optimization do not exist. This project component will address the aforementioned weaknesses and build an integrated Resident Safety Platform (RSP). The RSP will combine evacuation simulation and resource optimization in a way that the former will predict parameters used by the latter. The integrated platform can be used by stakeholders to determine wildfire evacuation and resource allocation policies in an evidence-based manner.