Wildfire Prepared Home Program: Improving Property Survivability and Insurability
The AIA in CALIFORNIA is responding to the recent Southern California fires with a unified plan for response, recovery, and rebuilding for communities that were devastated by the disaster. This series of sessions will help the architectural profession understand the rapidly changing landscape, the local issues facing communities, and strategies for resilient design and disaster response; the AIA in California is connecting policy makers, government officials, and practitioners, uniting architects in building a more just, equitable, and resilient future.
IBHS is a non-profit research organization that has spent years researching material and component vulnerabilities, wind-driven ember ignitions, and wind-driven building-to-building fire spread. Insights from these experiments have informed the Wildfire Prepared Home Program – a designation certification program that outlines a system of actions homeowners can take at the parcel level to address a property’s roof, building features, and defensible space to meaningfully reduce its risk of wildfire ignition.
This session will walk attendees through the science conducted at IBHS’ Research Center in South Carolina, along with post-disaster field investigations, that have collectively identified the most vulnerable areas around the home that must be addressed. IBHS will discuss the two Wildfire Prepared Home designation level requirements and how each addresses ignitions from embers, radiant heat, and direct flame contact. IBHS is actively engaged in improving community-scale wildfire resilience through its recently launched Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood standard. This neighborhood-level operational framework includes the science-backed requirements of its Home-level program and incorporates additional requirements to address structure density, the presence of connective fuels, and building materials – the three pillars of wildfire conflagration.
(*Virtual on Zoom. Register below to receive the access link)
FEATURED SPEAKERS: (12:00pm – 1:30pm)
Dr. Anne Cope – Chief Engineer, IBHS
Roy Wright – President and CEO, IBHS
Moderated by:
William (Bill) Melby, FAIA – former principal, Ordiz Melby Architects & past Chair, AIA California Disaster Assistance Network