GAITHERSBURG, MD -- The SFPE Educational & Scientific Foundation (SFPE Foundation) announced the availability of a new Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) training course for the fire service.

This marks the conclusion of a Federal Emergency Management Agency Fire Prevention & Safety Grant (Fiscal Year 2023) to develop an Advanced WUI fire risk assessment and mitigation curriculum.

Grounded in fire science, the new Advanced WUI curriculum addresses unmet WUI fire service training needs to reduce community risks.  

The Advanced WUI curriculum is the result of fire service needs assessments which identified a lack of advanced WUI community risk mitigation training for fire departments with WUI fire experience. Developed over 18 months, the Advanced WUI Fire Risk Assessment & Mitigation Curriculum offers engineering tools and resources on three topics, each presented in a 4-hour module: 

• WUI Fire Dynamics (Units include Fire and Energy, Heat Transfer and Ignition, and Fire Spread)
• WUI Fire Modeling (Units include Fire Modeling Fundamentals, Wildfire Spread Models, and Plume Dispersion & Impacts of Fire Effluents)
• Human Behavior in WUI Fires (Units include Human Behavior in Fire Fundamentals, Fire Impacts on People, Pedestrian Evacuation Modeling, and Traffic Evacuation Modeling)

The initial needs assessment workshop also identified the value of additional training opportunities beyond the 12 hours of advanced WUI curriculum. This led to the development of three free, on-demand webinars created exclusively for the SFPE Foundation by subject matter experts. The three webinars are available through SFPE’s learning management system. Successful completion of a knowledge test will award 1-1.5 Professional Development Hours. The webinars are: 

Wildland-Urban Interface: Community-Level Notification and Evacuation Plans (SFPE Foundation) by David Wolf, PhD, Battalion Chief, Golden Fire Department and Joseph Shellhammer, Undersheriff, Larimer County Sherriff's Office

Wildland-Urban Interface: Integration of Fire and Evacuation Modelling at Community-Level (SFPE Foundation) by Steve Gwynne, PhD, Professor of Evacuation and Pedestrian Dynamics, University of Greenwich 

Wildland-Urban Interface: How to Structure Effective Messages (SFPE Foundation) by Erica Kuligowski, PhD, ARC Future Fellow and Principal Research Fellow, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology 

The Advanced WUI Fire Risk Assessment & Mitigation Curriculum is the result of the collaborative efforts of two project teams, a Project Advisory Panel including fire engineering industry and fire service experts, and four pilots hosted by fire departments in California, Colorado, Texas, and Washington, plus two virtual pilots to evaluate the course curriculum and webinar content.   
The two project teams who developed the new Advanced WUI curriculum are: 

Engineering Curriculum Consultant Team from Halliwell Fire Research- US along with University of Canterbury, New Zealand, led by Jamie L. McAllister, PhD, PE, CFI, CSP. 

Engineering Risk Consultant Team from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo's Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) FIRE Institute, led by Margot McDonald, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP. 

The Engineering Risk Consultant team evaluated the Advanced WUI Fire Risk Assessment & Mitigation Curriculum, both from a technical standpoint and to identify the potential risk reduction achieved from the training implementation. They concluded that “the curriculum has significant potential to improve wildfire preparedness and risk reduction capacity when delivered to audiences positioned to influence community planning, mitigation, prevention, and preparedness activities.” The training demonstrates strong potential to contribute to risk reduction by:  

Improving understanding of wildfire hazards and fire behavior. 

Increasing familiarity with risk assessment methodologies.  

Strengthening understanding of mitigation strategies and their scientific basis.  

Improving evacuation planning awareness.

Enhancing communication between fire service personnel, engineers, planners, elected officials, and community stakeholders. 

Supporting evidence-based decision-making regarding wildfire preparedness and resilience. 

“With the development of these Advanced WUI Topics courses, the SFPE Foundation continues to expand and deepen our partnership with FEMA, the National Fire Academy, and the U.S. Fire Service,” explains SFPE Foundation Executive Director, Leslie Marshall, PhD. “We remain committed to working with fire service personnel to understand their training needs and to identify and deliver in areas where fire protection engineering research, knowledge, and resources can help close critical gaps and make our communities safer and more resilient.” 

In the next phase, the SFPE Foundation will seek funding sources and partnerships to bring the advanced WUI curriculum to fire service locations across the U.S. Dr. McAllister and her team “look forward to future deliveries of this course, as we believe it will have a positive impact on the fire service and its risk reduction and mitigation efforts.”