Effectiveness Assessment of Adaptation Measures to Build Wildfire Resilience of Road Networks

Abstract

Wildfires
have become a source of concern for society due to the increase in frequency,
intensity, and unpredictability. This has caused serious impacts all over the
world, even in areas where this type of problem did not occur before. Studies
on the adaptation of critical infrastructure have been conducted to reduce the
impacts of this type of hazard influenced by climate change. However, there are
currently no tools to evaluate adaptation measures and their influence on the
resilience of transport infrastructure to wildfires. Therefore, this paper
proposes the application of a simplified methodology to assess the priority
level in interventions on bridge networks and the effectiveness of different
adaptation measures. The methodology is applied to a case study in Portugal. In
that sense, the results show that adaptation measures such as changing
vegetation management policy and implementing wildfire spread barriers
effectively reduce the exposure of bridges. Therefore, this tool can be very
useful for stakeholders and practitioners supporting wildfire management in
terms of adaptation measures.