The US Fire Administration (USFA) has recently unveiled the Home Fire Fatalities and Social Vulnerability Explorer, a tool to shed light on fire risk and vulnerability across the United States.

This innovation is a part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Geospatial Resource Center, a world-class resource platform for emergency managers, researchers, and other professionals in the field of public health and safety. The link to this platform can be found here.

Combatting home fire fatalities through data assessment

This Social Vulnerability Explorer augments USFA’s pre-existing home fire fatalities data set.

It incorporates the Social Vulnerability Index data, provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR).

The tool’s main objective is to help evaluate potential underlying factors that could contribute to home fire fatalities.

Addressing fire risks in vulnerable communities

Moreover, this tool will increase awareness about fire risks and vulnerability on national, state, and county scales.

It is designed to aid communities in developing focused efforts to combat fire hazards within vulnerable communities and at-risk groups.

Accessing the Social Vulnerability Explorer is straightforward. You can locate it on USFA’s Home Fire Fatalities in the News page or by navigating to FEMA’s Geospatial Resource Center and selecting “Structure Fire” from the “Hazard Pages” menu.

Home fire fatalities: understanding the issue

Since 2012, USFA has been gathering information on home fire fatalities. Data is compiled through daily online searches of US news media reports, making it available to the public in near-real time.

This data is utilised to raise awareness about the perils of fire and the regularity of home fire deaths.

An enhanced data set for home fire fatalities and social vulnerability

The Social Vulnerability Explorer significantly bolsters the original home fire fatalities data set from the USFA.

This combined resource presents an interactive map to help raise awareness of fire risk and vulnerability at various geographical scales.

IFSJ Comment

The launch of this tool is a significant step towards employing data-driven approaches to understand and mitigate fire risks, particularly among socially vulnerable communities.

It provides a unique intersection of home fire fatalities and social vulnerability data, offering professionals a nuanced and comprehensive overview to better tailor their prevention and response strategies.