RAPID: 2025 Southern California Fires Embers Project: Crowdsourcing Data on the Distribution and Transport of Firebrands

Starting on January 7, 2025, a series of wildfires broke out in Southern California in the greater Los Angeles region. Due to extreme drought and severe winds, the fires entered densely populated areas, producing mass destruction, causing loss of life, and damaging or destroying 17,000 buildings. These wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires observed in Southern California can attack buildings by two means: (1) flames impinging on surfaces, and (2) embers (also called “firebrands”) being carried by the wind and raining down on buildings.

While ignition due to flames is relatively well understood, ember exposures are much less studied. This Grant for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) will crowdsource video footage of the Palisades and Eaton fires in Southern California to understand how embers travel in an urban environment. This data will inform computational models as well as testing methods that can advance the robust performance of structures under exterior fire exposures.

This research will contribute to national welfare, namely, how to ensure the fire safety and resilience of WUI communities.

The objective of this RAPID project is to crowdsource time-sensitive video and image data from news outlets, businesses, and private citizens, in conjunction with satellite data and event timelines, to measure the distribution and transport of firebrands based on windspeed and fire-proximity data from the Palisades and Eaton fires in Southern California. Using machine learning techniques, the videos will be analyzed to estimate the distribution and trajectory of embers in an urban environment.

Site visits will be made to video locations to take measurements of distances, e.g., between buildings, observe and record the damage, interview witnesses, and collect other available contextual information. Project data will be archived and published in the NSF-supported Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) Data Depot repository (https://www.Designsafe-ci.org).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.