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It is unlikely that insurance rates and policies alone will determine whether or not a landowner decides to build a new home on wildfire-prone land.
This summary highlights the major research Headwaters Economics has conducted concerning controlling fire suppression costs, state case studies, and the growth of homes in the WUI.
Explore the West’s economy, regional performance, and what is driving economic growth.
Wildfires increasingly are threatening urban areas—often repeatedly—putting more homes, lives, infrastructure, and other resources at risk.
This report outlines a number of solutions to alter the pace, scale, and pattern of future development in the Wildland-Urban Interface.
Wildfires pose a growing threat to many communities. As more development occurs near wildfire-prone lands, there is a growing need to reduce risk through improved land use policies and tools.
This paper reviews the experience of national floodplain management programs to draw lessons for new approaches to reduce the costs and risks posed by wildfire to properties in the Wildland-Urban Interface.
Today’s economy is much different than what we hear in the rhetoric from current politicians. We need our leaders to wrestle with current problems rather than old ones.
The failure of Congress to pass wildfire disaster funding is a missed opportunity for two reasons: one to stop ‘fire borrowing’ and second to reduce risks and costs to homeowners and the taxpayer.
Study finds no evidence of a relationship between wildfire suppression costs and Firewise participation, suggesting policies should focus on other solutions to lower future expenditures, such as preventing development in high risk areas.
This report describes how the protection of homes in the Wildland-Urban Interface has added to wildfire costs and concludes with a discussion of solutions that may help control escalating risks and expenses.
Headwaters Economics research and accompanying interactive map show the amount of per capita income explained by protected federal lands for each county in the non-metropolitan western U.S.
This report finds that the West’s popular national parks, monuments, wilderness areas and other public lands offer its growing high-tech and services industries a competitive advantage.
News release for report that shows how the western United States is outperforming the rest of the country and the role protected federal lands in providing western states a competitive economic advantage.
This fact sheet summarizes Washington’s recent economic growth and the role of protected public lands in supporting faster job creation and higher per-capita income.
This New Mexico fact sheet summarizes the state’s recent economic growth and the role protected public lands play in supporting faster job creation and higher per-capita income.
During the past decade Nevada and the West outperformed the nation, and the competitive advantage offered by its protected lands supported job growth and higher per-capita incomes.
Montana’s recent economic growth and the role of protected public lands in supporting employment creation and higher per-capita income are explored in this report.
Helped by its high quality of life and protected public lands, Idaho’s economy and population grew rapidly in the past decade. The majority of growth coming from health care and administrative services.
Colorado’s rate of population, employment, and real personal income growth has outpaced the nation and this fact sheet looks at the role of protected public lands in supporting jobs and higher incomes.
Kelly Pohl, who researches climate resilience, housing and land use at Headwaters Economics said that in high-demand places like mountain towns and coastal areas disasters tend to accelerate gentrification.
“There are a lot of cities that share similarities with what happened in Los Angeles,” said Kelly Pohl with Headwaters Economics, a non-profit research group in Montana that had done research on the cost of retrofitting homes to protect against wildfires. Think Boise, Idaho. Salt Lake City.
“A lot of Montanans can do things before a fire starts,” said Kelly Pohl, an the associate director of Headwaters Economics. “We have to realize that wildfire is part of our landscape, so we have to take actions to reduce the likelihood that it will destroy property.”
Wildfires threaten nearly one-third of U.S. residents and buildings, according to a new government analysis that suggests the risk is greater than previously known. The Forest Service, working with Montana researchers, took a new approach to measuring wildfire risk and limited its historical analysis to the 15 years between 2004 and 2018.