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This paper investigates fire department response time to locations of ignition after an earthquake and proposes a framework to identify vulnerable areas in a community by considering both the likelihood of ignition and potential delays in response of the fire department. Delays are calculated as a function of bridge damage and blocked roadways due to building debris. Uncertainty in bridge performance and debris accumulation are incorporated into the analysis. The framework is applied to a case study to demonstrate how the proposed work can be used to plan fire department resources, and minimize losses from postearthquake fires. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resilience and functionality of a community after an extreme event rely on performance of several interdependent systems. Data from historic events show that power network seems to be the most critical lifeline, given the dependency of water, communication, transportation, and gas networks on power. This paper focuses on modeling of the performance of an electric network, after an earthquake, for application in analysis of interdependent systems. The paper proposes a streamlined approach to analyze post-earthquake performance of an electric network to identify regions in a community without power. The proposed approach quantifies damage at the component level using fragilities and a capacity index parameter that measures operability. System level network analysis, based on the capacity of the network, is completed to measure and compare power flow before and after the earthquake. A limiting ratio is defined to identify dark versus bright regions. The procedure is validated for two case studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is defined as a geographic area where human developments and flammable vegetation merge in a wildfire-prone environment. Losses due to wildfire have been rising in the past decade, attributed to changes in vegetation growth, fuel availability, and increased land developments in WUI. This paper studies the process of wildfire spread inside WUI communities. The fire spread rate within WUI communities is determined for nine wildfires that were ranked among the most destructive wildfires in North America. An improved quasi-empirical model that considers radiation and fire spotting as modes of fire spread inside a community is proposed. The new model is validated using the documented spread rates during the 2007 Witch and Guejito fires and the 2017 Tubbs fire. The proposed model is computationally efficient and can be used to quantify fire spread rate and the number of affected structures inside a community during a wildfire event. • Communities are being exposed to faster spreading wildfires in recent years. • A streamlined integrative urban fire spread model is proposed. • The proposed model is applied to two case studies in California. • The proposed model is capable of capturing fire progression in WUI communities when compared to real scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]