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This paper analyzes the effects on housing prices of fire hazard disclosure in real estate transactions. In 1998, California passed the Natural Hazard Disclosure Law (AB 1195), which requires sellers to fill out a form disclosing to potential buyers whether their residence is in a statutory flood, wildfire, or seismic zone. This study looks specifically at whether homes in designated wildfire hazard zones in California saw any drop in value following this law. We found that location in a statutory fire zone is actually associated with a 3% positive price premium both before and after AB 1195, probably due to the unmeasured amenity values associated with location in the urban–rural interface. However, the combination of proximity to recent fire perimeters and post-AB 1195 disclosure does have a negative effect on selling price. After AB 1195, homes in statutory fire hazard zones that were within five kilometers of the perimeter of a major and recent fire sold on average for 5.1% (or $10,600) less than comparable homes that were in statutory fire zones but not near the perimeter of a recent fire, while no such differential exists prior to the law. This indicates that state-level fire-disclosure requirements prior to AB1195 (which were numerous, but vague, limited to fewer hazard zones, and poorly enforced) were inadequate. Therefore, while disclosure on its own does not appear to have influenced the real estate market in all statutory fire zones, it does negatively impact prices when in combination with proximity to a recent major fire.

Modern emergency management policy is built around the concepts of shared responsibility and the development of resilient communities. Drawing on the Australian context, this chapter argues that giving effect to these policy directions will require negotiation between stakeholders and an inevitable trade in values, interests, and resources. The chapter identifies an apparent contradiction at the heart of modern disaster management: that improvements in establishing professional emergency and risk management services may have reduced the capacity of individuals and local communities to take responsibility for disaster preparation and response.

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.

Forests too thick with fuels that are too continuously spread to resist fire are common throughout the west. After a century or more of actively working to suppress fire across the landscape, we now recognize that fire is a part of our forests, shrublands, and range, and that it will come whether we wish it or not. At last, managers must realize forests cannot be fire-proofed (DellaSala, Williams, Williams, & Franklin, 2004). We must work with fire rather than against it.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

Timor-Leste is a small, island country situated between South East Asia, Australia, and the Pacific, where it shares a unique mix of climates from all three neighboring regions (Kirono, 2010). The country achieved independence in 2002 having suffered over 400 years of colonialism and foreign occupation, first by the Portuguese and then by the Indonesians (Sandlund et al., 2001). The post-referendum troubles in 1999 left Timor-Leste with seriously damaged infrastructure and relatively little economic activity (Hill, 2001). However, since 1999, the country has made significant steps forward and despite some upheaval in 2006 has significantly developed in terms of infrastructure and economic activity. Nonetheless, Timor-Leste, as a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) also has a number of other vulnerabilities and challenges to contend with including its mountainous region, relative isolation, dependence upon agriculture, and high levels of unemployment. Timor-Leste has a land mass of 14,874km² with a population of approximately 1 million, which is rapidly increasing (Government of Timor-Leste, 2010). The country is dominated by the central Mountain range of Ramelau with as much as 44% of Timor-Leste's land having a slope of more than 40% and over 70% of the country's population dependent upon agriculture for their livelihood (Sandlund et al., 2001).

Wildfire researchers have typically focused on the formal social relationships and organizational structures of community and community leadership in analyzing fire preparedness and planning. This may be reasonable given the policy positions of natural resource agencies charged with management of wildfires on large public lands, particularly in the American West. When fires are allowed to burn on public lands, there are inherent risks to communities located in the path of the burn. Formal relationships between federal and state agencies and local communities (particularly with local government leaders and other people in positions of authority and power), therefore, are critical in maintaining clear communications, in reducing potential dangers, and in providing appropriate responses when wildfire dangers occur. The scholarly research in this area has a clearly applied focus, and much of it also has a “top-down” orientation that reflects the resource agency funding that underwrites this work. The relevance is clear: resource managers are charged to identify persons and groups “with a stake” in the outcome of resource management policies, and to evaluate the outcomes of agency-designed educational and outreach programs for affected publics.

This chapter discusses two California policies that unintentionally promote development in fire-prone areas. First is the state's Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan, a state-regulated statutory insurance industry association that provides basic insurance to property owners who are unable to obtain it in the private market. FAIR Plan was intended to be an insurer of last resort for rare cases when the private sector was unwilling to provide coverage. A functioning insurance market should discourage development in hazardous lands by charging appropriately priced premiums or denying coverage where hazards are extreme. The FAIR Plan short circuits this mechanism and subsidizes development in highly hazardous environments by forcing insurers to provide coverage at a price that is far below what the market would charge. While FAIR Plan was envisioned to fill a need for a small number of homeowners who could not otherwise obtain insurance, instead enrollment in this program has skyrocketed. The second policy relates to how the state maps very high fire hazard severity zones (VHFHSZ), statutory zones designed for designating hazardous lands in urban and suburban jurisdictions with their own fire departments. Numerous legal loopholes have given communities wide leeway to keep land within their boundaries from being designated as VHFHSZ for disclosure and fire zoning purposes, even if those lands are objectively hazardous according to the state's criteria. Of most concern with these loopholes is the fact that California's natural hazard real estate transfer disclosure standard relies on these maps, meaning that homebuyers in communities that use these loopholes may be led into a false sense of security when purchasing a home because the statutory Natural Hazard Disclosure form presented prior to transfer asserts that no known wildfire hazard exists.

This book is divided into four parts: (1) Institutions and policy, (2) The economics of hazards, (3) Community involvement, and (4) Management and ecology. The first section contains four chapters that cover the issue of wildfire from historical and institutional perspectives. “Forest fire history: learning from disaster” by Roger Kennedy (Chapter 2) addresses the pressures and politics giving rise to the current situation. “Fire Policy in the Urban–Wildland Interface in the United States: What are the Issues and Possible Solutions?” (Chapter 3) by Scott Stephens and Brandon Collins provides a summary of the problems associated with wildfire hazards in UWI communities, discusses fuels-treatment options for local governments and property owners, and analyzes challenges to planning, drawing on experiences from Australia. “Wildfire hazard mitigation as “safe” smart growth” (Chapter 4) by Robert Paterson looks at how smart growth principals are being adapted to fire-safe land use planning and zoning, including a discussion of the role of regional coordination and state-level planning requirements. “Practical and institutional constraints on adopting wide-scale prescribed burning: lessons from the mountains of California” (Chapter 5) by Kurt Menning details the problems of fuel accumulation due to suppression, the potential power of prescribed burning as a management tool, and the social and regulatory obstacles to implementing wide-scale prescribed burning programs.