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Community-based fire management (CBFiM) integrates community action with the standard elements of fire management and mitigation, such as prescribed fire (managed beneficial fires for reducing hazardous fuel loads, controlling weeds, preparing land for cultivation, reducing the impact of pests and diseases, etc.), mechanical fuel treatment, defensible space planning, wildfire awareness and prevention, preparedness planning, and suppression of wildfires. In developed examples of CBFiM, communities are empowered to have effective input into land and fire management and problem solving and to self regulate to respond to fire and other emergencies. Its premise is that local people usually have most at stake in the event of a harmful fire, so they should clearly be involved in mitigating these unwanted events.

Social science research is used to support the formulation of natural resource management decisions with accurate and timely information. Due to risk and potential impacts, this is important in wildland fire management. The purpose of this paper is to identify the respondent perceptions of a natural disturbance agent's impact on fire management in Colorado and Wyoming.

The research methodology included a self-administered questionnaire completed by a random sample of respondents in three study locations adjacent to national forests. A quantitative analysis was conducted to identify attitudes about fuels management (prescribed fire) and beliefs about fire and fire management.

Respondents viewed prescribed fire favorably and they understand the natural role of fire on the landscape. While results suggest respondents support management of forest conditions to decrease the effects of a wildfire, they do not feel that individuals have a right to expect their home to be protected from fire by land managers, nor do they agree with restricting home building near national forest land.

Future research should continue the longitudinal assessment of attitudes toward prescribed fires, incorporating respondent distance to the national forest or identifying respondents living within the wildland-urban interface.

This paper illustrates how applied, social science research can meet the needs of agencies and public officials. Results of this paper have been presented to state and federal forestry officials, and members of an executive-level task force in Colorado studying wildfire insurance and forest health.

Climate change during the next century is likely to significantly influence forest ecosystems in the western United States, including indirect effects on forest and shrubland fire regimes. Further exacerbation of fire hazards by the warmer, drier summers projected for much of the western U.S. by climate models would compound already elevated fire risks caused by 20th century fire suppression. This has potentially grave consequences for the urban–wildland interface in drier regions, where residential expansion increasingly places people and property in the midst of fire-prone vegetation. Understanding linkages between climate variability and change, therefore, are central to our ability to forecast future risks and adapt land management, allocation of fire management resources, and suburban planning accordingly. To establish these linkages we review previous research and draw inferences from our own retrospective work focused on 20th century climate–fire relationships in the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW). We investigated relationships between the two dominant modes of climate variability affecting the PNW, which are Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and historic fire activity at multiple spatial scales. We used historic fire data spanning most of the 20th century for USDA Forest Service Region 6, individual states (Idaho, Oregon, and Washington), and 20 national forests representative of the region's physiographic diversity. Forest fires showed significant correlations with warm/dry phases of PDO at regional and state scales; relationships were variable at the scale of individual national forests. Warm/dry phases of PDO were especially influential in terms of the occurrence of very large fire events throughout the PNW. No direct statistical relationships were found between ENSO and forest fires at regional scales, although relationships may exist at smaller spatial scales. However, both ENSO and PDO were correlated with summer drought, as estimated by the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), and PDSI was correlated with fire activity at all scales. Even moderate (±0.3°C decadal mean) fluctuations in PNW climate over the 20th century have influenced wildfire activity based on our analysis. Similar trends have been reported for other regions of the western U.S. Thus, forest fire activity has been sensitive to past climate variability, even in the face of altered dynamics due to fire suppression, as in the case of our analysis. It is likely that fire activity will increase in response to future temperature increases, at the same or greater magnitude as experienced during past climate variability. If extreme drought conditions become more prevalent we can expect a greater frequency of large, high-intensity forest fires. Increased vulnerability to forest fires may worsen the current fire management problem in the urban–wildland interface. Adaptation of fire management and restoration planning will be essential to address fire hazards in areas of intermingled exurban development and fire-prone vegetation. We recommend: (1) landscape-level strategic planning of fire restoration and containment projects; (2) better use of climatic forecasts, including PDO and ENSO related predictions; and (3) community-based efforts to limit further residential expansion into fire-prone forested and shrubland areas.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a review of mega fire catastrophic phenomena and bring out some useful aspects for more effective pre‐, during and post‐disaster management of mega fires.

The paper uses two very recent (2007) mega fire cases (Peloponnese – Greece and California – USA) to provide evidence of the magnitude of this kind of disaster and how their impacts can be mitigated if certain management practices are implemented.

Mega fires are major catastrophic events, with multiple impacts for the communities and areas in which they happen. They are very difficult to manage, mainly owing to their magnitude. However, their negative effects and impacts can be mitigated if pre‐, during, and post‐disaster activities and measures are planned and implemented.

This paper could be useful to practitioners and public service managers that are responsible for the development of fire management policies and management of mega fires situations.

The statistics show that older adults have been major fire victims in high-rise buildings. However, the fire safety building codes in most countries are not inclusive and do not reflect provisions for older adults. The research aims to develop a fire risk assessment index system for older adults living in high-rise residential buildings in India. The study further develops a fire rating system to improve fire safety provisions in high-rise buildings in India.

The paper employs Delphi, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and fuzzy comprehensive risk evaluation techniques. It considers 18 in-depth interviews and group discussions with builders, developers, architects, policymakers, and fire safety experts and consultants to develop a fire risk assessment system for older occupants living in high-rise residential buildings in India.

The fire protection systems and fire management systems are not as per the needs of older adults. The egress system components need improvisation considering the challenges of older adults.

The study is limited to older adults living in high-rise residential buildings in the capital city of Gujarat, Ahmedabad.

This study will assist policymakers in developing fire safety standards that are targeted to the needs of older persons living in high-rise residential buildings during a fire evacuation.

While several approaches for measuring fire risk in high-rise residential buildings exist, no such system has been developed specifically for older adults in India.

Fuel moisture is an important determinant of fire behaviour. Changes in climate will result in changes in fuel moisture and this will impact fire management by modifying the length and severity of the fire season and by changing opportunities for prescribed burning. This paper aims to examine the effect of climate on fuel moisture in Eucalypt forests.

A climate model is used to predict weather for five Australian cities from 1961 to 2100 under a high‐emissions scenario. Time series are extracted from the model and used as boundary conditions for a process‐based fuel moisture model. Fuel moisture predictions are used to examine two management variables: the number of days suitable for prescribed burning in spring, and the number of days when fire could burn in summer.

There were significantly more fire days in warmer‐drier years. The number of days with extremely low fuel moisture was also higher in warmer‐drier years. Variation in the number of burning days was narrower than for fire days but the number of burning days was lower in warmer‐drier years. The lower number of burning days in warm years was due to a higher rate of fuel drying in these years.

Analysis was limited to Australian locations. In future, the work should be expanded to include Eucalypt plantations on other continents.

The changes predicted will require changes to fire management practices, particularly the timing of prescribed burning.

This paper uses a new, physically based method to examine the effect of climate change on fuel moisture. It will be useful to fire managers seeking to adapt to a changing climate.

Traditional fire practices are explored so as to understand transformative relationships to Country and as an analogy for developments in Indigenous Health. Stories of fire encompass the resistance of Indigenous Australians to colonial dispossession. Stories of fire engage Indigenous communities with law and culture and from this with health. Transformative knowledges can be built upon re-kindling Indigenous land and law practices through fire practices. Building relationships with fire and burning practices corresponds with the developing sustainable health and cultural practices across Indigenous communities.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate forest fires and their relationship to prevention and mitigation strategies based on the empirical problems raised by this study. Public policy implementation (in this case, the policy of forest fire management) is influenced by the role played by government and by the participation of the public and stakeholders (in this case, companies), as well as the effects of good governance. Thus, from the empirical problems associated with theoretical problems and normative problems, this study raises the influence of the role of central and local government on the implementation of forest fire prevention policy in Indonesia, which is moderated by the good governance variable.

This study used a quantitative approach by adopting survey methodology. The study has aimed to assess both large and small population groups, by selecting and reviewing carefully chosen samples of the population to find the incidence, distribution and relative interrelation of the variables considered (Kerlinger and Lee, 2000). The survey was undertaken in areas of Indonesia that have a high level of vulnerability to forest fires. There are currently six provinces – Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, East Kalimantan and South Kalimantan – that have the highest intensity of forest fires. The study population was taken from 105 villages in those six major provinces experiencing forest fires. Sample size precision was determined by using Slovin’s formula with a precision of 10 percent and, thus, a sample size of 52 was obtained.

The central government’s activities have no significant effect on regional forest fire prevention. However, the results found that there is a significant effect caused by the interaction between the central and local governments and their governance of forest fire prevention. Even though the direct effect is not significant, the interaction effect significantly influences the forest fire prevention governance variable, which is a pure moderator. This study found that the role of central government has no effect on forest fire prevention. If the role of the central government is high, it will not impact the effectiveness of forest fire prevention, which is reflected in the aspects of prevention and early warning, reward and punishment, the improvement and management of ecosystems by reviewing courts, law enforcement and national and regional synergy.

This is one of the few public administration science studies to have investigated the relationship between good governance and forest fire policy in Indonesia, particularly the combined roles played by central and local governments.

This study reports on a survey of experienced emergency management personnel in Australia and New Zealand to identify the influence of organisational features in perceived emergency management performance. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of organisational features in emergency response performance and to discuss how this knowledge can be used to enhance the response capacity of emergency services organisations.

Based on a review of the literature, a conceptual theoretical model for organisational performance is first developed based on four organisational features found to be previously important in emergency management organisation. These are, adaptability, leadership, stability (mission and direction) and stakeholder communication. An organisational survey was distributed to all 25 fire and emergency services agencies in Australia and New Zealand which included indicators of these elements. Responses were received from experienced emergency management personnel from fire and emergency services agencies. The sample was stratified into the three main organisational types, namely, established, expanding and extending organisations.

The findings reveal that the predictive significance of organisational features in emergency response performance vary among established, expanding and extending organisations. The predictive significance of stability, adaptability and leadership for perceived success is strong in all organisational types. It is interesting to note that the predictive significance of communication with external stakeholders is low in all organisation types. This indicates the preference of emergency services agencies to look internally within their own operations than externally to build relationships with different specialism.

The theoretical model in this study makes a first attempt to understand the role of organisational features in emergency response performance of organisations in Australia and New Zealand. This work contributes to theorizing emergency operations by highlighting how organisations need to manage two orientations simultaneously: their own internal as well as external orientations, together with their processes for managing both mission and direction and the need for change and flexibility.

The purpose of this paper is to show the evaluation of the learning process to determinate if engineering student marks would be better from sand-table teaching than from traditional teaching.

The innovative teaching project incorporating digital sand-table use was evaluated by asking undergraduate and postgraduate students to rate their learning experiences and by analyzing their academic performance.

The results show that the percentage of students passing the courses, and marks on the course tests were higher for students taught using sand-table, compared to students taught without using this tool.

Engineering curricula are constantly revised to address the demands for undergraduate courses and specialization courses, and the differing needs of actual practice in relation to theoretical knowledge.

The experience at the University of Córdoba (Spain) offers some insights to other engineering degrees and educational institutions that wish to focus on the development of innovative academic programs and student capabilities.