New Risk Management Findings from Uppsala University Reported (A Burning Concern: Family Forest Owner Wildfire Concerns Across Regions, Scales, and Owner Characteristics): Risk Management

2021 OCT 06 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Current study results on Risk Management have been published. According to news reporting out of Visby, Sweden, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “While there is a large literature on how individual homeowners perceive location-specific wildfire hazard, there is only one study specific to U.S. family forest owners. Using respondents from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service’s National Woodland Owner Survey of family forest ownerships in the United States, we investigate the relationship between landowners’ wildfire concerns and biophysical wildfire hazard across the contiguous United States.”

Funders for this research include Knut & Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Broderna Edlunds Foundation.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Uppsala University, “As a measure of long-term conditions for high intensity wildfire, we use the USDA Forest Service’s Wildfire Hazard Potential Index as our key variable of interest. We test six ways of aggregating Wildfire Hazard Potential using 1-, 10-, and 100-mile (1.6, 16, and 160 km) radii buffers with linear and logistic specifications for hazard potential. Results show the log of Wildfire Hazard Potential is the best fit for modeling wildfire hazard concerns. Respondents in the western United States have a higher baseline level of concern but are not necessarily more sensitive to the hazard spectrum compared to respondents in the north. Respondents in the southern United States have a lower sensitivity to the hazard spectrum compared to respondents in the north and west. Using predicted probabilities at the means, we also compute regional prevalence ratios to compare the impact of biophysical wildfire hazard to the relative impact of other important variables.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Various property and owner characteristics not related to biophysical hazard potential, such as emotion, receiving information about wildfire, and the presence of a house on the property are determinants of wildfire concern in some, but not all regions of the United States.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: A Burning Concern: Family Forest Owner Wildfire Concerns Across Regions, Scales, and Owner Characteristics. Risk Analysis, 2021. Risk Analysis can be contacted at: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - http://www.wiley.com/; Risk Analysis - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Brian Danley, Uppsala University, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Nat Resources & Sustainable Dev, Visby, Sweden. Additional authors for this research include Jesse Caputo and Brett J. Butler.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13816. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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