RAPID: Household Responses to the Los Angeles Wildfire Emergency

The objective of this Grants for Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project is to collect ephemeral data to better understand the evacuation experience of households affected by fast-moving urban wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, California. The project examines how people evacuate (travel mode, time, routes), where they find immediate shelter, and the effect of the evacuation experience on evacuees and their future housing decisions.

Cities continue to develop in wildland-adjacent areas, greatly increasing community exposure to wildfires. The findings from this study provide the data to improve how households, emergency responders, and management agencies prepare for and respond to this growing threat.

The increase in urban wildfires highlights the need to better understand human behavioral responses to them, an area of research with significant gaps. This RAPID project focuses on wildfire evacuation and collects survey data from a heterogeneous set of households affected by the two recent urban wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, California.

The data are collected using a random sample of households in the most affected neighborhoods and a convenience sample collected through non-profit and community partners. The survey instruments include questions on evacuation (mode, routes, and experience), the evacuation experience, and shelter or housing destinations and type. The survey data are paired with information on the built environment in the evacuated neighborhoods and the location and timing of official evacuation notices.

The survey, combined with other supplementary data, provide the foundation for improved behavioral models and serve as the basis for strengthening evacuation procedures in urban wildfires and other disasters.

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.