The Impact of Wind Characteristics on the Spatial Distribution of Damage to the Built Environment during Wildfire Events: The 2022 Marshall Fire

In recent years, several places all over the world have experienced devastating wildfire events that have resulted in exorbitant losses. With the climate warming every year, the trend of destructive fires is expected to continue in the future as well. To be better prepared for such events, an understanding of interaction between wildfires and the built environment is required. In this study, a graph-based approach is utilized to predict the damage to individual buildings in a test area selected from the 2022 Marshall Fire–affected region. The validity of the graph model is first shown by comparing the predicted damage with the observed damaged patterns, showing 72% accuracy. The model is further utilized to investigate the sensitivity of the damage patterns to wind conditions to better understand the correlation between wind characteristics and the resulting damage. For two wind speeds, 12 and $25\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$, polar fragilities are developed by evaluating the damage for different wind directions. The results showed the variation in damage distribution among all wind directions for $25\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$ to be more than twice that for $12\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}$, highlighting the fact that the impact of wind conditions is nonlinear and needs to be carefully considered for wildfire risk assessment.