Designing for Wildfire Resilience: Integrating Fire Risk Mitigation through LEED v5

Fire is a natural part of the landscape, like wind and rain, that cannot be eliminated. Protecting buildings from rain and wind is not done by trying to stop the rain or wind but rather by designing buildings and their surroundings to be resilient to these impacts. We need to take a similar approach when addressing the impacts of wildfire.

For more than 100 years, communities have been developed with little attention to the risk of wildfire, leaving more than half of residential properties across the US exposed to this risk. Rather than address the vulnerability of homes and communities through sound regulation and design, the national approach focuses on emergency response, tasking local, state and federal firefighters with the role of saving lives and property in increasingly dangerous conditions. Learning from disasters such as the LA fires in January this year is critical to change our approach to how we build communities threatened by wildfire.

Fire is the only natural disaster that not only impacts the built environment but where the built environment impacts and feeds the fire. The amount of fuel available in our buildings leads to fires increasing in size when entering the built environment. It is not enough to focus just on each individual building in the design phase but instead consider the community as one system where each building can impact the fire experience of the others. Community planning is a necessary part of creating wildfire resilience. It is also a critical component to ensure proper evacuation routes for all residents.

This session will bring all these topics together and explore how LEED v5 supports teams in addressing fire risk through intentional planning, design, and choice of materials