Why this fire researcher values collaboration across scientific disciplines

August 16, 2022
by ISR Staff

Blog

At the heart of the International Science Reserve (ISR) is a commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists to respond to some of the world’s biggest crises. To do this, the ISR regularly brings together scientists for readiness exercises, like our first scenario on wildfires, and seeks advice from experts from different scientific disciplines.

One ISR expert, Steve Kerber, grew up in a family of volunteer firefighters and joined the fire service when he was just 16 years old. His childhood experience led him to his career in fire protection engineering, and ultimately, to research how to address the world’s unresolved fire safety risks and emerging dangers.

He is currently Vice President and Executive Director of the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI) at UL Research Institutes. He leads a fire safety research team dedicated to addressing the world’s unresolved fire safety risks and emerging dangers to reduce death, injury and loss from fire.

We recently spoke with him about his experiences.

Wildfires are getting worse, but in every country, the response is still too slow. What are the major obstacles to fixing this problem?

Wildland urban interface fires or wildland fires that spread into communities are incredibly complex and destructive events. Our collective response to them is an interdisciplinary problem, requiring many different stakeholder groups to work together. The policies, codes, standards, research, response, enforcement and public action have not kept up with the growth of the hazard. We need to make significant progress in all these areas and more to keep pace with the scale of the danger.

Approximately 86% of the scientists involved in the ISR to date reported that they would like to work on wildfires even if it is not their primary area of research. What does this type of multidisciplinary research look like in practice?

I think the interesting part about studying fires is that it is inherently multidisciplinary and applied. For example, we can take my chemistry or forestry skills and apply them to a fire problem. At FSRI, we like to have a direct issue that we’re trying to resolve, and we like to work with stakeholders that can tell us exactly what the problem is that needs to be solved.

Steve Kerber, Vice President and Executive Director of the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI) at UL Research Institutes.

We’ve got chemists, fire protection engineers, mechanical engineers, data scientists, and nuclear engineers all working together to address fire problems through multidisciplinary, applied research. For example, we have applied fire science and engineering to improve the safety and effectiveness of the fire service by conducting experiments with them to understand better the science behind their strategies and tactics.

What lessons could scientists in our network learn from UL Research Institutes?

It always starts with studying the problem alongside the stakeholders. Our key stakeholders at FSRI include the fire service, academia, fire investigators, fire safety engineers, government, industry and the general public. We strongly believe in using the words “with” versus “for.” While we study fire safety every day, we must be humble and understand what scientific knowledge, perspective and experience we do not have as researchers. With that understanding, you can build your team and partnerships to more effectively conduct the research or respond to the challenge.

What did you learn from the first set of wildfire readiness exercises?

At first, I wasn’t sure how the scientists and their proposals would all fit together or collaborate, which is the heart of the ISR network and mission. But then I had to recalibrate and say, well, we’re testing and trying out a new system. I loved the international component and that scientists from all over the world were submitting their perspectives on how to solve a problem through a variety of methods.

How could the ISR push that collaborative model further in a time of crisis?

The state of research on wildfires is young, and many aspects of science are needed to tackle the wildland fire problem, including research areas like climate science, meteorology, data science and emergency management. There are many contributors to the research, including federal agencies like NASA, the Department of Agriculture and Interior. They are all pumping billions of dollars into dealing with wildfires.

At the same time, it’s a very fragmented group. In many cases, you have fire departments protecting communities and homes, and the fire service protecting trees. And there is a lot of confusion in the middle. That’s where we have a tremendous opportunity to better collaborate across disciplines and agencies.

In June 2022, the International Science Reserve released a report on our initial research and development of a model to mobilize researchers around the world and to match them with scientific, technical, and human resources to magnify their impact. The report highlights the results from the first readiness exercise on wildfires we conducted with the support of experts like Steve Kerber. Download the full report here

Real-world scenarios prepare the ISR community for future wildfire crises

July 5, 2022
by ISR Staff

BlogCrisis

When disaster strikes, everyone wishes they were better prepared. One way to prepare is to practice in advance. This is the basic idea of scenario-based exercises in crisis preparation: take a hypothetical but realistic disaster situation. Run a simulation where different individuals, institutions, organizations, or other entities participate and work through what they would do in that situation. These scenario-based exercises are important to any preparedness program’s maintenance and continuous improvement plan, and they are a cornerstone of the International Science Reserve.

For the ISR’s first readiness exercise, we wanted to design wildfire crisis scenarios to offer scientists in our network the opportunity to practice how they could adapt their research to respond to a wildfire crisis. To design the scenarios, the ISR worked with many wildfire experts from different scientific disciplines and firefighting experiences. One of the generous experts who contributed was Sara Brown, Ph.D., of the U.S.D.A. Forest Service.

Sara is the Program Manager for the Fire, Fuels, and Smoke Science Program (FFS) of the Rocky Mountain Research Station, housed at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory. Sara’s Ph.D. is in ecology and she has also worked as a Professor of Fire Science in addition to her work with federal land management agencies in fire suppression and fire management.

We talked to Sara about her experience with the ISR wildfire readiness exercise.

What’s the relationship between your experience as a firefighter and your work in fire science?

Before I immersed myself in fire science, I spent 11 seasons fighting wildland fires – forest and grassland fires – for various land management agencies. I worked on a type-2 fire crew, a helicopter crew, a hotshot crew, and as a smokejumper.

All that experience as a wildland firefighter made me aware how important it is to integrate natural and social science into land management and leadership decisions.

How did you help with the ISR readiness exercise?

I participated in selecting and designing three wildfire scenarios that could help scientists practice for possible future wildfire crises. I thought about how to propose scenarios that had some aspect of a potentially global nature, simulated a crisis that could realistically occur, and would be relevant across disciplines.

Sara Brown, Program Manager for the Fire, Fuels, and Smoke Science Program (FFS) of the Rocky Mountain Research Station

What are some of the lessons from your work in the Rocky Mountain Research Station that are important for the ISR?

I work with outstanding scientists who study a broad range of fire science, including ecologists, fire behavior scientists, scientists focusing on smoke emissions, and scientists who work to improve our wildland fire management system. Since 1960, we have been one of the world leaders in fire science. We create new fire models, tools, products and science that is used around the world. Our fundamental science aims to understand the intricacies of how fire burns and its impacts to various ecosystems, which sounds simple but is complex. We take that fundamental science and develop it into tools that land and fire managers can use. So, I knew it was important that the ISR approach would be multidisciplinary and take a holistic view of the impacts of wildfires.

The ISR’s global approach is also crucial. In my role, I am responsible for liaising with partners and collaborators outside the Forest Service. As a result, we have developed partnerships with colleagues from nearly every continent, including North America, Northern Eurasia, and Australia. As a result, we have ‘boots on the ground’ experience in multiple countries. Access to multidisciplinary research on wildfires worldwide proved essential as scenarios were chosen due to their global nature.

How did your community of scientists inform your approach to building scenarios?

From my perspective, working with all these great scientists, I considered what might be scenarios that would get the ISR program where it’s trying to go. I suggested making the scenarios fairly general and trying to hit many of the different kinds of fire we study.

I believe many wildfire scientists and non-wildfire scientists will be interested in contributing significantly if they can help. And so, for this reason, I tried to imagine how these exercises would appeal and what information might entice them.

What are the essential attributes of wildfire scenarios?

One of the critical things when designing an effective readiness exercise is to make sure that the scenarios are realistic enough to provide a challenge but not so unrealistic that they become impossible. Additionally, we must understand the global context of wildfires and consider factors like climate change, population growth, and urbanization. It’s a delicate balance, but I think ISR managed it well.

We came up with different wildfire scenarios for our readiness exercise by looking at past wildfires worldwide. For example, scientists often study three different types of fire: crown fire, surface fire and ground fire. Some of our fire scientists recently provided international support for crown fires and surface fires like happened in Greece and South America last year. By looking at these different types of wildfires, we tried to create realistic scenarios for the readiness exercise.

What problems do you see the ISR solving?

The ISR is building a network that captures and matches general skillsets associated with needs. It is unique because it is potentially enormous in scale. And the problem we are trying to tackle is large-scale. So, the ISR has a real chance of providing support far away and near if it works. It is a perfect science experiment for a worthy cause.

The Voices of the ISR

June 16, 2022
by ISR Staff

BlogCrisisMission

In March 2022, scientists from around the world participated in the ISR’s online simulation involving hypothetical wildfires in three countries. For this first Readiness Exercise, members of the ISR science community crafted research proposals responding to the three wildfire scenarios. The scientists who submitted proposals come from nine countries, including Brazil, Chile, Australia, the U.S., and the Philippines, and have varied research backgrounds, from paleoecology to behavioral science, from biology to mathematics.

We talked to these readiness pioneers about what motivated them to take part in the ISR exercise, and learn more about what they hold dear as scientists. They told us that the readiness exercise was an opportunity to think seriously about both a specific crisis scenario and scientific preparedness more broadly. They underscored the importance of cross-border collaboration and preparing well ahead of the next crisis.

Here are some highlights from these conversations.

Fulya Aydin-Kandemir, Hydropolitics Association, Ankara & Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey
Fulya Aydin-Kandemir is based in Turkey and regularly collaborates with scientists internationally. She brings a scientific background in theoretical physics and life sciences to climate change research spanning geographic information systems, spatial analysis, remote sensing, climate change projections, and land use management. For her ISR readiness exercise proposal, Dr. Aydin-Kandemir (a graduate of Ege University Solar Energy Institute, Turkey) collaborated with colleagues from Turkey and Greece by drawing on several of these areas to elaborate a plan for GIS- and remote sensing-based mapping of regional water resources to assist both prevention and suppression of the ISR scenario’s Greek wildfire.

Malik Padellan, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Rensselaer, NY, United States of America
Malik Padellan is an early-career bioengineer who currently works as a process scientist, focusing on optimizing manufacturing processes. He has been involved with the New York Academy of Sciences since he was in school. For his readiness exercise proposal, Malik combined the ISR wildfire scenario with another scientific interest of his to propose testing wildfire spread detection through impact on modified fungal networks.

Roberto Dias, Scientific Director of Microbiotec, Fundação Arthur Bernardes/Petrobras, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Brazil
Roberto Dias is a biochemist in Brazil who directs research in molecular biology, virology and biotechnology. He currently focuses on using microbiological markers to aid the recovery of areas affected by climate change. Dr. Dias and his colleagues chose to address the ISR Northwestern US crown fire scenario for their ISR readiness exercise proposal. They considered how machine learning and predictive modeling could be used to understand the effect of wildfires on soil microbiota and support regional recovery.

Matthew Adeleye, The Australian National University, Australia
Matthew Adeleye is a paleoecologist who studies fossilized plant remains to understand long-term interactions—mainly Pleistocene and Holocene epoch—between ecosystems (vegetation and wetlands), fire, climate, and human impact. Although his current research in Nigeria and Australia focuses on terrestrial vegetation, Matthew has a longstanding interest in peatlands. This led him to address ISR’s Indonesian peat fire scenario for his readiness exercise proposal, which applied paleoecological insights and techniques to identify significant long-term impacts of the wildfire and fundamentally improve the region’s recovery.

Vinicius Albani, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil
Vinicius Albani is an assistant professor of mathematics who has a passion for combining theory and practical application. His recent international collaborations have included publications that have contributed to modeling the evolution of the covid-19 pandemic. In response to the ISR’s Northwestern US crown fire scenario, Dr. Albani and his colleagues proposed combining their expertise in mathematical, statistical and computational modeling with key wildfire data to form accurate long-term forecasts that could assist in both preparation and response.

Daniel San Martin, Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile
Daniel San Martin is a computer scientist who designs models to respond to and prevent Chilean wildfires. For his ISR readiness exercise proposal, Daniel chose to apply a Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) framework to ISR’s Greek wildfire scenario, using mathematical models and high-performance computing to implement real-time analysis and forecasting of fire dynamics that would allow faster and better decision-making in the response efforts, as well as prepare for future outbreaks.

Tracy Marshall, Department of Geography, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago
Tracy Marshall studies households and their behaviors to assess, understand and improve their levels of disaster preparedness. She used this expertise and her professional background in risk, crisis and disaster management—including at the national level in Barbados—for her ISR readiness exercise proposal. Tracy proposed a socio-demographic, place-based household wildfire risk assessment that would save lives and make households more resilient, in response to the ISR’s Northwestern US crown fire scenario.

Daisy B. Badilla, Palawan, Philippines
Daisy B. Badilla is a chemical and environmental engineer who has studied biofiltration as an air pollution control technology. She briefly worked for the Philippine Nuclear Research Institute as Supervising Science Research Specialist and currently helps provide safe drinking water to indigenous communities in Palawan, Philippines. She is involved with the New York Academy of Sciences as a mentor in the Junior Academy and the 1000 Girls, 1000 Futures program. For her readiness exercise proposal, Dr. Badilla used her background in air quality research to explore minimizing the health impacts of the Indonesian peat fire scenario.

Avid Roman-Gonzalez, Business on Engineering and Technology S.A.C. (BE Tech), Universidad Nacional Tecnologica de Lima Sur (UNTELS) & Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades (UCH), Peru
Avid Roman-Gonzalez is an electronic engineer specializing in areas including image processing, bioengineering and aerospace technology. His professional background includes work for companies such as the French Space Agency (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), as well as teaching appointments at multiple universities. For his ISR readiness exercise proposal, Dr. Roman-Gonzalez built on his existing work in risk and disaster management, and suggested using satellite images to improve localized wildfire response efforts.

Why wildfires were chosen as the pilot crisis for the International Science Reserve

January 11, 2022
by ISR Staff

BlogCrisis

We’ve faced unimaginable difficulties in public health since 2020, but the pandemic isn’t the only crisis confronting communities across the globe.

Although wildfires have been ravaging countries around the world for the last decade, many have recently seen their worst blazes in generations.

In 2020, Colorado and California made global headlines for recording their largest wildfires in history, collectively burning through almost 5 million acres of land. In a report from the National Interagency Coordination Center, the amount of land burned by wildfires in the western U.S reached 8.8 million acres—an area larger than the entire state of Maryland. Unfortunately, these disasters are not just occurring in the U.S.

Climate change exacerbates conditions that are favorable for wildfires, including hotter temperatures, longer droughts, and drier vegetation. Today, we’re experiencing these conditions in real-time as record high temperatures now occur twice as often as record lows across the United States.

As wildfires continue to increase in frequency and severity, we must be prepared for the next crisis that threatens to devastate lives.

Scientists are a crucial component of any large-scale response to a global emergency, and the current procedures around wildfire preparedness and prevention are not sufficient enough to successfully mitigate the issue.

Over the last decade, federal investments in wildfire research have been disproportionately lower than the amount spent on wildfire suppression. For example, the U.S. Forest Service spent nearly $2 billion towards putting out wildfires in 2016, yet only received $27 million to fund their National Fire Plan Research and Development Program that same year. More recently, the ongoing health crisis has led to researchers getting reduced financial support from federal and state government agencies to help address the magnitude of fire risk and preparedness.

Outside of the need for increased research investments, there is also a lack of cohesion between industry, academia, and government when it comes to wildfire prevention. Last year’s COVID-19 High-Performance Computing Consortium, an innovative public-private body that provided more than 600 petaflops of free computing power to the COVID-19 research effort, successfully proved that harnessing the power of industry and academia is the best way to flexibly address a future crisis.

This is why we’re recruiting scientists to join the International Science Reserve (ISR), a global network of experts working to accelerate solutions that will help mitigate global crises like wildfires. While there are existing organizations dedicated to crisis response, the ISR is specifically focused on mobilizing scientists to augment existing response organizations. This creates an engaged ‘crisis community’ which regularly participates in preparedness exercises and contributes to a better understanding of the role of science in crisis mitigation. In the long term, this could influence future policy regarding the role of science in crisis preparation and response.

The International Science Reserve will bring together an esteemed network of scientists to accelerate solutions to prepare for — and help mitigate — the impact of wildfires.

To help slow the rapid spread of wildfires, scientists in the International Science Reserve (ISR) will address the issue with a multitude of actions. These actions may include:

Integrating long-term climate modelling into scenario planning so national and international organizations can better prepare for when and where wildfires are likely to be a danger.
Collaborating with international scientists to examine long-term climate trends as well as organizations involved in short- and medium-term weather forecasting, such as the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Partnering with the World Meteorological Organization to ensure that accessible and timely data are made available to determine impacts of smoke and air pollution stemming from the fires.
Conducting in-depth analyses of the responses of various organizations to wildfires, as well as highlighting best practices for actions which are known to be effective to help with future prevention.

If you or your organization are interested in learning more about the International Science Reserve and how you can get involved, please contact us at ISR@nyas.org. We need your partnership in this mission.