About the Project

Purpose of WWRI

The purpose of WWRI is to measure and communicate social and environmental dimensions of wildfire resilience. Resource managers, decision makers, and community leaders will be able to use WWRI to understand local opportunities and liabilities in terms of wildfire resistance and recovery. In the long term, WWRI users will be able to track the progress and efficacy of projects and policies.

What is WWRI?

The WWRI score will be calculated by combining the scores of multiple topic areas, or domains. We include social and ecological domains in order to assess a holistic picture of wildfire resilience across all kinds of landscapes, from the most remote reaches of the Yukon Territory to urban centers in Southern California. The image below illustrates some of our working concepts for these domains. We will continue to revise the subject matter and number of these domains throughout our development process.

We expect to launch the full WWRI interactive dashboard in late 2025. At that time, you will be able to select an area of interest on a map, view the overall WWRI score, and explore the domain scores for that area. We will include access to our data sources and methodology so that anyone can learn how the scores were calculated.

Where is WWRI?

WWRI scores will be calculated across 12 Western US states, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory, shown in red below. This geography encompasses most of western North America, where wildfires have been increasing in frequency and extent

You will be able to use WWRI to answer questions such as:

How resilient is my community, should a fire occur?

Which areas or systems are least resilient? Which are most resilient?

How does wildfire resilience differ across the landscape?

We began developing WWRI in late 2023. Since then, our team has been hard at work with experts in forestry, fire ecology, economics, and policy to develop a robust scientific approach to measuring wildfire resilience. We aim to release a free and publicly available interface for WWRI in late 2025. After that, we expect to update WWRI scores on an annual basis, or as new data becomes available.