VIDEO: At the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, the Fire Modeling Institute pools data from over 30,000 communities across the country to calculate wildfire risk. The mapping process is updated every two years due to the scale of the work. Communities are not exclusive to city limits; they also include about a mile buffer zone. โWe’re fortunate here at the Fire Lab, we have people that specialize in a lot of different elements of fire data,โ Greg Dillon, the director of the Fire Modeling Institute, said.
The team of researchers pulls data from the U.S. Census Bureau and FEMA to map housing. They also use fire occurrence and weather data from the last 15-30 years and compare it to other communities to determine risk.Missoula is in the 92nd percentile for risk, but smaller mountain communities like Essex, Condon and Polebridge are even higher risk.”So it’s the 92nd percentile nationally, but compared to communities in Montana, it’s the 81st percentile,” Dillon said.
