Drone use to aid real-time decision-making
- Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Ricardo Sanfelice is an expert in automation, control, and robotics.
- Professor of Computer Science and Engineering Katia Obraczka is an expert in Internet of Things technology.
Economic impacts of wildfires
- Economics Professor Galina Hale studies climate change impacts to financial stability and can discuss the general economic forces that affect wildfire’s impact on real estate, insurance, mortgages, and more, and how uncertainty makes it difficult to incorporate these risks into the economic system.
Fatalities from wildfires
- Forensic anthropologist Alison Galloway is an expert in locating, recovering, and analyzing burned human remains. She can discuss where people tend to go when a wildfire hits, where search and rescue teams find resulting fatalities, how to search for and identify human remains after wildfires, the best recovery techniques, and what we can learn from remains.
Housing crisis and wildfire risk
- Miriam Greenberg and Hillary Angelo are conducting new research on how lack of affordable housing in California cities may be driving increased development in and near wildlands, exposing low-income families and renters to more climate risks in the urban periphery. They can discuss how wildfire risk and resilience is related to urban form, housing affordability, and socioeconomic status.
Prescribed burns
- Environmental Studies Professor Karen Holl is conducting new research on prescribed burning in California coastal prairies to understand the impacts on native plant biodiversity and carbon storage.
Serious games for wildfire preparedness
- Professor of Computational Media Katherine Isbister, expert in human-computer interaction and game-user research.
- Professor of Computational Media Sri Kurniawan is conducting research on how to train people to safely evacuate in threatening fire conditions, making best decisions for personal property and transportation.
Smoke from wildfires
- Effects on people’s health: Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Patrick Chuang is an expert on atmospheric physics and chemistry. He can also comment on what weather forecasts can tell us about how wildfires will change.
- Effects on wine: Distinguished research professor of chemistry Phil Crews studies the effects of wildfire smoke on the quality of wine grapes.
Trees:
- Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Jamila Pitterman studies how fire injures a tree and if there are approaches that can help predict the likelihood of tree survival after a fire.
- Environmental Studies Professor Michael Loik studies how plant communities in California respond to climate change stressors, including how drought and shifting rainfall and snowfall patterns affect tree death and fire risk in the landscape.
