00:00Well, it is wildfire season, of course, with devastating blazes burning across the Mediterranean, the United States, and Canada.
00:06And like numerous other extreme weather conditions or events, data suggests that record-breaking wildfires are essentially becoming the new normal.
00:14And as the international community, again, largely fails to commit to reducing carbon emissions and the pace of global warming,
00:21growing attention is being turned to management and adaptation.
00:24Well, my guest today is Dr. Melissa Sterry, a design scientist who specializes in building architectural and urban resilience to wildfires specifically.
00:35Dr. Sterry, thank you so much for joining us today.
00:37So for those who are not familiar with architectural innovations, wildfires, especially in urban environments,
00:43sound like something that it would be very, very difficult to adapt to, at least in my view.
00:47So what does resilience to fires look like in an urban setting?
00:51It very much depends on the setting because fires are a product of their environment.
00:58So you have different kinds of wildfire.
01:01So there isn't a one-size-fits-all.
01:03You have to understand what kind of threats are in the place where you're building.
01:09And those threats can include the topography, which affects the physics of fire.
01:14So, for example, you're going to be much more at risk if you are in a home that is on top of a slope.
01:19Also, the foliage around you, some foliage is very combustible.
01:26And so there's not one solution, but there are several.
01:30One of the clues for design amid growing wildfire threats can be found in the behavior of fire-adaptive plants,
01:38amongst other kind of examples from nature, so to speak.
01:41Can you talk more about that, some of the most striking examples, perhaps?
01:45Absolutely. Wildfire and plants on Earth have been evolving literally since plants first started to colonize land.
01:57And there are many, many species that have evolved to live with fire.
02:01Some actually rely on it for their reproduction.
02:04And as far as, for example, the fires that we find in Europe are concerned, that's really key,
02:09because many of these plants actually spread fire.
02:13They have oils and they have other properties.
02:15But plants have different strategies, and those strategies have been adapted to the different fire conditions.
02:22So, for example, you have some plants that almost create a backblast,
02:27and they protect themselves through essentially using up the oxygen and sort of distributing the fire away from themselves.
02:35That's a defensive action.
02:37Some have really thick bark.
02:39Again, some of the plants in Europe have this, like the cork oak.
02:42And then others actually are sacrificial in the sense that the parent plant will die,
02:49but upon its death, the offspring will actually reproduce, and very rapidly.
02:55And they do that through, among other things, releasing their seeds upon the passing of the fire.
03:01And that action is triggered by heat and or the chemicals in the smoke.
03:05So, can you talk then about some of your work?
03:08I mean, how do you—I know there's no one-size-fits-all approach based on what you said there,
03:13but how do you use some of these examples from nature amongst, you know, your own expertise
03:18to turn this into concrete solution for people?
03:24So, my primary study area is the Western United States,
03:27which actually has very similar ecologies to parts of Europe.
03:31And I've studied these various different plants and the territories they're in,
03:36and I've migrated that to architecture and the built environment.
03:39So, rather than creating one set of building plans, three different sets of building plans,
03:46each one for a different kind of what we call a fire regime.
03:49That's the parameters that you're going to be dealing with.
03:51So, for example, some fires travel very quickly, but they're low intensity.
03:56And these are surface fires, and these are fires that spread through grasses.
04:02That's very relevant to Europe because we've got a lot of invasive grasses,
04:06and grasses really thrive in fire.
04:08Then you've got other kind of fires which are very intense.
04:11These are the kind of forest fires that you would associate with places like Canada,
04:15or where there's basically a lot of timber.
04:17There's a lot of biomass to burn.
04:19Now, some of the heat intensities that you get in those fires,
04:22you cannot build a structure that is going to be fully resilient to it.
04:27So, I've looked at the physics of these different plants, the biochemistry,
04:31the different properties that they have, and how we can apply that to architecture and to planning,
04:37and also dovetailing in both the vernacular, the indigenous, the local architecture.
04:43So, if you like low-tech, good to go with a few adaptations,
04:46and also bringing in state-of-the-art smart materials, engineering,
04:51information communications, technology, all the clever stuff.
04:55So, there's a spectrum of ways that we can actually look to solve this problem
05:00if we look to nature, which, of course, has already solved it.
05:02So, there's a lot to learn there.
05:04Dr. Serian, my understanding, in some places there have been calls on public officials
05:08to simply ban people from living in fire-prone areas altogether.
05:12One example being fast-burning grasslands in California.
05:17I imagine, since you say the vegetation is similar in France,
05:21that there's maybe a similar argument to be made here.
05:24Do you think that measures like this should be a part of adaptation strategies,
05:28especially because I imagine that adaptive innovations can be expensive, difficult to put in place?
05:34So, how do you think that should factor in, if at all?
05:37There are a lot of people that do argue for that, and particularly the fire ecologists.
05:43I argue that, actually, I don't think that's a realistic solution.
05:48And for a couple of reasons.
05:48Number one, we're not just facing wildfire as a threat.
05:52We're facing the threat of flooding.
05:54We're facing the threat of sea level rises.
05:56And when you start adding all of these up, frankly, there's not much land left.
06:00Then you've got the fact that people are attached to the places that they live.
06:04They've got homes, they've got communities, and so there's no panacea.
06:08You know, we don't have an ideal solution here.
06:11So, in my work, I look to the worst-case scenarios.
06:13Okay, what can we do when we don't have the luxury of being able to move away from the fire-prone places for whatever reason?
06:22And that, in many ways, is a better design challenge.
06:25Because if you can design at that level, well, then, hey, you know, if we are able to vacate some of those places where wildfires are present, that just makes it easier.
06:34But in my work, I don't assume that we can do that.
06:38Do you see a conflict between focusing on adapting to climate change and working to do more to prevent it?
06:44I mean, some argue that focusing too much on adaptation, on innovation, gives the illusion that we can essentially adapt our way out of the most extreme climactic conditions.
06:54What's your take on that?
06:55How can we strike an appropriate balance?
06:59That's a really key point.
07:01There are those that think that the technocratic solution is appropriate.
07:04And usually, as with many other things, when somebody says to you, there's a one-stop-stop solution here, you know, one-stop solution, and we can invent this for you and we can sell it to you and we can manage it, there's usually a bit of a catch to it.
07:21But certainly, technologies can help us to do extraordinary things.
07:24I mean, for example, with the fires that are burning in Europe right now, I won't be doing a field trip to go and see what happened there.
07:30I'll be looking at the satellite footage, and I will be looking at information that I can literally see from an array of technologies in space and that give me a fine-grained detail.
07:40And then I can dovetail that in with other data to get a really clear idea of how the fires moved through the landscape and what was going on.
07:47But equally, there are a lot of things that we can actually do in order to tackle this problem right now, because it's not just animals and it's not just plants that have evolved to live with fire.
07:57If we look back through the history of humanity, we were living with fires, we gained control of fire.
08:04Actually, it's likely Homo erectus before us gained control of fire.
08:09We have quite a lot of firecraft historically, and particularly as far as Europe is concerned, we need to bring that back in, because land management is really key to this.
08:20And we can also bring in some of these historic approaches to making your buildings and your towns more resilient that don't require lots of technology.
08:30So fire is a mosaic.
08:33You will never find a fire anywhere where it's all completely homogeneous.
08:38It will be patchy, and that's going to be the same approach, I think, that we need to apply to protecting our homes and our lives and our livelihoods.
08:47Dr. Melissa Sterry, thank you so much for joining us today.
