The principal objective of the 2-year FIREWALL project is to explore planning activities leading to a convergence research team formation and capacity building within the Arctic community for resilience against wildfires. The FIREWALL project unites seasoned experts from academia, industry, as well as local and state-wide agencies and stakeholders. The team members have diverse backgrounds and complementary skill sets, aiming to enable creative brainstorming, form synergistic models, and guide convergent multidisciplinary discussions that will generate knowledge on better understanding, navigating, planning, and adapting to the increasingly dynamic Alaska, vulnerable to wildfires. To this end, and from a lens of energy resilience, the project aims to uniquely blend a range of interrelated topics across the Arctic natural, engineering, and social landscapes, including but not limited to fire sciences, environmental science and engineering, energy engineering, energy policy and law, decision sciences, social and economic sciences, public health and medicine sciences, among others.

Phase 1 Objectives

  1. Understanding the unique interactions of the natural stressors with the environment in Alaska and how that forms wildfire.
  2. Understanding the cause-effect dynamics of wildfire hazards and the energy network in Alaska.
  3. Understanding the societal, regulatory and policy issues in Alaska in order to adopt advanced energy technologies for resilience against wildfires.
Read More

Phase 2 Objectives

  1. Provisioning adaptive response and operational resilience of a target energy ecosystem (microgrid, industry, or substation) to a spectrum of received fire intensity.
  2.  Provisioning solutions for structural hardening of the energy network in Alaska co-optimized with that of other critical infrastructures and wildfire management practices.
  3. Provisioning solutions that are adaptive to the societal, regulatory and policy changes in Alaska.
Read More