Mapping hazard-access mismatches in wildfire evacuation systems: a multi-facility accessibility framework
- 1Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Pittsburgh
Abstract
Wildfire evacuation depends not only on hazard exposure but on whether residents can reach essential resources under stress. To capture this dimension of evacuation risk across California, the proposed Wildfire Evacuation Resource Index (WERI) quantifies census-tract accessibility to emergency shelters, hospitals, lodging, gas stations, and EV charging stations within a three-step floating catchment area framework, combining proximity, capacity, demand, and competition. A Monte Carlo disruption analysis stress-tests the index under fire-driven road and facility outages, and high-threat low-access tracts are classified by terrain and population density to separate addressable infrastructure gaps from structural geographic constraints. Bivariate Moran’s I links the resulting accessibility patterns to wildfire threat from California’s FRAP dataset. Wildfire threat coincides with high neighboring accessibility for shelter, lodging, gas, and charging, while hospital accessibility shows the inverse pattern. The sharpest mismatches concentrate in Los Angeles for gas and charging, where population outpaces capacity. Between 77 and 86 percent of high-threat low-access tracts for lodging, gas, and charging are in populated communities and are addressable through facility expansion, whereas hospital gaps are largely structural. Population exposure further shows that residents in high-threat areas disproportionately face limited rather than strong access to hospitals, gas stations, and EV charging.
Related
- FireDataForge: A Unified Framework for Multi-Source Wildfire Data Retrieval and Integration
- TRAILS – a novel framework for time-height-resolved attribution of long-range transported wildfire smoke
- Integrated facility-level framework enables practical phosphorus recovery under real-world constraints
- Integrating social and spatial dimensions in tsunami evacuation modeling: a case study of Panggarangan coast, Indonesia
- Testing the theory of planned behavior in predicting evacuation intentions during storms
BibTeX
@article{nayeri2026mapping,
title = {{Mapping hazard-access mismatches in wildfire evacuation systems: a multi-facility accessibility framework}},
author = {Omid Nayeri and Fateme Gorzin and Ramin Shabanpour},
journal = {npj Natural Hazards},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
doi = {10.1038/s44304-026-00239-y},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s44304-026-00239-y},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Mapping hazard-access mismatches in wildfire evacuation systems: a multi-facility accessibility framework
AU - Omid Nayeri
AU - Fateme Gorzin
AU - Ramin Shabanpour
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/01
JO - npj Natural Hazards
DO - 10.1038/s44304-026-00239-y
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s44304-026-00239-y
AB - Wildfire evacuation depends not only on hazard exposure but on whether residents can reach essential resources under stress. To capture this dimension of evacuation risk across California, the proposed Wildfire Evacuation Resource Index (WERI) quantifies census-tract accessibility to emergency shelters, hospitals, lodging, gas stations, and EV charging stations within a three-step floating catchment area framework, combining proximity, capacity, demand, and competition. A Monte Carlo disruption analysis stress-tests the index under fire-driven road and facility outages, and high-threat low-access tracts are classified by terrain and population density to separate addressable infrastructure gaps from structural geographic constraints. Bivariate Moran’s I links the resulting accessibility patterns to wildfire threat from California’s FRAP dataset. Wildfire threat coincides with high neighboring accessibility for shelter, lodging, gas, and charging, while hospital accessibility shows the inverse pattern. The sharpest mismatches concentrate in Los Angeles for gas and charging, where population outpaces capacity. Between 77 and 86 percent of high-threat low-access tracts for lodging, gas, and charging are in populated communities and are addressable through facility expansion, whereas hospital gaps are largely structural. Population exposure further shows that residents in high-threat areas disproportionately face limited rather than strong access to hospitals, gas stations, and EV charging.
SN - 2948-2100
ER -