Camp Fire tragedy pushes researcher to find better way to deliver fire risk, save lives

Hamed Ebrahimian was moved by the Camp Fire tragedy to figure out a better way to deliver fire risk and save lives.

RENO, Nev. — The Camp Fire in 2018 showed how a growing number of people living in Northern California are becoming familiar to the loss of life and property. Even with improving technology, fires are spreading so quickly that, sometimes, there is little time to warn people for evacuations or to fully understand the impacts of fire.

The Camp Fire moved Hamed Ebrahimian, an associate professor at the University of Nevada Reno with a background in computational modeling and civil engineering. He told himself that we could do better than we are now in a digital era and go beyond weather models and forecasts.

Ebrahimian wanted to get the science and the human component into the fire risk. This means looking at how fires might impact communities beyond just the economics and how will it impact the quality of peoples lives.

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