Applying the Concept of Verification in Fire Engineering to the Wildland Urban Interface

Despite increased focus on resilient planning and construction design in areas prone to wildfire impacts, communities internationally continue to be regularly impacted with devastating consequences. Through a comprehensive analysis of international frameworks, practices, and guidelines we found that (i) inconsistent approaches to addressing wildfire related risk served to reduce the potential effectiveness of measures intended to improve wildfire community and building resilience, and (ii) there was a dearth of evidence-based performance criteria and limited verification methods that were suitable for performance-based design solutions (which focus on achieving specific outcomes rather than following prescriptive codes) in the wildfire context. Furthermore, the ambiguity within the Building Code of Australia surrounding design verification and assessment of public buildings including hospitals, childcare facilities, schools, and other assembly buildings within the wildland-urban interface (where urban development adjoins large areas of vegetation that support wildfire propagation) is particularly problematic. To address these challenges, we introduce the Wildfire Expected Risk to Life and Property (WERLP) framework. This innovative framework offers a holistic, absolute, and probabilistic verification approach, providing a robust yet flexible method for assessing fire safety engineering design in both engineering and urban planning contexts.