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This paper describes the application of, enhancements to, and use of surface fire spread models in predicting and mitigating fire risk in the Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI). Research and fire management strategies undertaken in the East Bay Hill region (containing the 1991 Tunnel Fire) of the San Francisco Bay area over the past decade are reported. We ascertain that surface fire spread modeling has impacted policy and decision making, resulting in a regional strategic plan where large landowners and public agencies are able to implement fire mitigation practices. Although these practices involve extensive fuel management within a buffer zone between the wildland and residential properties, the residential property owners are still at risk, as no strategy within neighborhoods can be accurately mapped using the current scale of the data and models. WUI fires are eventually extinguished by fire fighters on the ground, up close, and at the backyard scale. We argue that large-scale (backyard scale) mapping and modeling of surface fire spread is necessary to engage the individual homeowner in a fuels management strategy. We describe our ongoing research and strategies, and suggest goals for future research and development in the area of large-scale WUI fire modeling and management.

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.

There has been a long-running debate as to which is more important in the job market, education or experience. Traditionally, people have looked at these as exclusive traits of one another; however, more progressive thought sees these as complimentary attributes in perspective and existing employees that can be achieved at the same time through proactive activities such as micro-credentialing. This chapter will explore how formal and informal micro-credentialing processes can be put forward in both education and training environments.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, 2022) shows an increase in severity and frequency of natural disasters in the past years with more organisations being faced with surviving these events than ever before. The recent COVID pandemic has shown how every organisation across the globe can be affected by a disaster and the cascading effects that follow. Techniques such as micro-credentialing is a tool that can be utilised by all organisations to ensure a safer outcome from these events as well as being positioned for better continuity of critical operations through the event helping to increase the survivability and profitability of the affected organisation.

The use of micro-credentialing components successfully could be discussed using any field or discipline. To be applicable to all readers, this chapter primarily focusses on the emergency services/management discipline as an example programme of how micro-credentialing can be efficiently utilised to produce a more successful workforce. Emergency management (EM) truly is an interdisciplinary field that utilises many other fields to protect people, organisations, and communities from emergencies and disasters. More importantly, though, there are components of EM that every field should embrace for safety as well as to ensure continuity of operations through any event, thereby making the components in this chapter applicable to all readers regardless of discipline or organisation.

There has been a lack of focus on multi-level issues within leadership research. Dionne and Dionne (2009) address this gap in the research by presenting a Monte Carlo simulation examining leadership at four levels of analysis within a group decision-making context. While their work makes a strong contribution to the sciences of leadership, group decision making, and team complexity, many aspects of the research demonstrate potential for great expansion and improvement. Toward this purpose, this commentary discusses and provides suggestions regarding the topics of computer simulation in team research, group decision-making theory, and the modeling of team complexity. It is intended to stimulate continued critical thinking and more innovative, practical, and carefully designed research efforts.

Purpose – The objective of this study is to assess the level of understanding of family takaful among the Muslim community of southern Thailand.

Methodology/approach – This study used a questionnaire as the data collection tool. It sampled 400 respondents who were selected in a simple way, regardless of whether they owned protection policies or not. The methods used to analyse the data are descriptive statistics and means, and independent samples T-testing.

Findings – The study found that the Muslim community in southern Thailand had a generally low level of understanding of family takaful. However, the differences in the level of understanding between those who participated in family takaful and those who did not were examined. The research findings were then found to indicate that there was a distinction between the two groups: those who participated in family takaful had a clear and positive understanding of it, while those who did not had no clear understanding of it. These are significant differences which signify that participation in family takaful by Muslims in southern Thailand was influenced by their understanding of it.

Research limitations/implications – This study was conducted in the Muslim community in and around Muang District, Narathiwat Province, in southern Thailand.

Practical implications – This study clearly indicates, especially to those involved directly or indirectly in the takaful industry, that there are still many in the community who do not participate in family takaful because they lack understanding and have negative perceptions of it. Those who are involved must make the effort to communicate more in-depth insights to target communities, which could effectively enhance the uptake of family takaful.

Originality/value – This is the first empirical study of takaful in Thailand. It was conducted to determine the level of understanding of family takaful in the Muslim communities of southern Thailand and to compare the levels of understanding of family takaful between those who have participated in it and those who have not.

This chapter aims to contribute to the study of social protests around the world and particularly in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on an Argentinean case. Throughout these years, Argentina like many other Latin American societies witnessed the growth and development of intense social and political struggles in concert with the armed insurgency. Did workers or other popular social sectors support guerrilla organizations in Argentina? What was the interconnection between working-class and armed insurgent struggle? This chapter examines these liaisons by studying the case of an industrial city that has been identified to be a paradigm of labor radicalization and political violence in Argentina—Villa Constitución. Through the reanalysis of documents and sources as well as interviews, we discuss established interpretations on armed and labor struggles that reveal a broader heterogeneity in the forms of social support to revolutionary violence. Solidarity among workers and armed militants appears in (1) the actions of militant workers at their workplaces, and (2) the armed actions organized by militants in support of worker’s fights.” These two groups reinforced each other's activism. But, by no means can we directly deduct from this that rank and file workers immediately identified their strikes with ideologically revolutionary objectives.

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.