Introduction The goal of this senior project is to explore, test and implement wildfire mitigation strategies in the built environment for communities in high fire severity zones throughout the Western United States. While the project is site specific, findings and design solutions are applicable to all wildland urban interface communities (WUI). This document contains a comprehensive guide on how to identify and prepare existing infrastructure to be used for incident response and how to design new infrastructure to mitigate wildfire and be “fire resilient” by incorporating mitigation techniques into site design. It has become increasingly clear that large portions of Western US are at risk for large, difficult to contain wildfire. Specifically, communities that interface with fire-prone open space are at an elevated risk. Fire, a natural ecosystem processes has shaped the landscape in the West, with many plant communities coined as “fire dependent”. It should be expected that at varying frequencies fire will return to the landscape, if not through human doing than by nature. If we are to continue to build in these naturally fire prone environments than we must design in a way that protects our communities and allows for natural fires to continue in a managed form.
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