Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
A key part of disaster management, planning, and resilience assessment is evaluating the price of repairing wildfire damage and the vulnerability of the highway transportation system to such damages. To give stakeholders and decision-makers useful information, a method for estimating the risk of roadway wildfire damage in terms of loss through physical attributes and monetary value is required. Measuring the risk of wildfires on highways and the associated expenses are a crucial first step in raising the understanding of the effects that wildfires have on roadways and developing mitigation plans for them.
The absence of fundamental estimation methods on highway infrastructure concerning physical damage and financial impacts related to wildfires poses a significant problem in roadway risk assessment. To address this issue, this approach relies upon highway damage data reports obtained from state departments of transportation. Although there are many existing wildfire mitigation strategies that address post-fire debris flows, rockfall activities, health effects of smoke, economics, and the wildland-urban interface (WUI) to reduce wildfire risk, little to no information is available that describes the physical damage and estimated financial impacts in relation to wildfire risk to highways.
This dissertation fills in the gaps in the literature by conducting three distinct but connected studies that improve the assessment of highway damage from wildfires. The loss to roadways at the statewide level is improved by this research's proportional numerical framework, which is statistically assessed for significance applying linear regression utilizing “R” a statistical programming language. This data breakdown examined the association between the total amount and cost of the impacted roadway and the level of damage per characteristic to better address wildfire mitigation strategies.
The study's findings demonstrate the benefit of using the computational framework to evaluate the damage caused by wildfires to roads. The results show, despite the sheer lack of physical and financial data, there may be some potential indicators of overall costs between some of the financial damage characteristics in relation to the amount (length) of highway affected. The study has broken down the specific physical damages onto roadways by wildfire and the costs associated with each, as well as provide a procedure to evaluate such damages in relation to the length of highway impacted, the cost per unit of damage and the impact that these wildfires have to the average daily traffic (ADT) on the highways.
This dissertation makes a significant contribution to the field by providing a fundamental theory and application of roadway wildfire risk assessment. Applying mitigation methods yields a clearer awareness of this benefit because of this damage assessment. To increase highways' resistance to wildfire hazards through risk-informed techniques, policymakers, emergency management staff, and other partners will benefit from the methods and findings produced in this dissertation.
Date
7-10-2024
Recommended Citation
Christiansen, Kevin, "Highway Wildfire Damage Assessment using Physical and Financial Impacts from the 2020 Labor Day Wildfires" (2024). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 6552.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/6552
Committee Chair
Friedland, Carol