Expanding ex-urban growth combined with increasing wildfire hazards throughout the country has lead to the demand for decision support for assessing wildfire hazards to communities. Classical risk management includes identifying the hazard, the susceptibility of assets to that hazard, and what can be done to mitigate adverse effects and/or maximize benefits. We developed a decision support tool for Lewis and Clark County's planning department and the Tri-county FireSafe working group to assess wildfire hazard and mitigation potential for residential structures. We assess wildfire hazard at two scales: a landscape scale representing the annualized most likely hazard and a local scale representing an extreme, worst case scenario event. In addition, we develop a hazard mitigation difficulty dataset using local vegetation cover and topographic characteristics. We demonstrate how the mitigation difficulty classes can be cross walked with the International Wildland Urban Interface building codes for mitigating home loss via wildfire through construction materials and site location restrictions. This information is presented in a spatial geodatabase for rapid assessment by local land-use planners and wildfire protection responders.
