Supporting wildfire recovery using regional recovery models

This project is developing a decision-support software platform that brings clarity, foresight, and data-driven guidance to disaster recovery. Between 2000 and 2020, more than 2 billion people were directly impacted by wildfires, floods, earthquakes, and hurricanes, and recovery from these events often takes years or decades. This leaves homeowners, businesses, and communities in prolonged uncertainty; at the same time, recovery managers must make high-stakes decisions on permitting, resource allocation, and stakeholder coordination with limited data and little visibility into the consequences of their choices. Building on more than a decade of research in regional recovery modeling, the team’s platform represents a city as an interconnected system of buildings, infrastructure, labor, and administrative capacity. It simulates how recovery unfolds under different policies and resource constraints, generating dynamic recovery trajectories rather than the static post-disaster snapshots produced by existing hazard and damage assessment tools. The platform also functions as a centralized data hub, integrating real-time information from homeowners, local agencies, utilities, and contractors, enabling stakeholders to test policies, identify bottlenecks such as permitting delays, and monitor implementation as recovery progresses. The team is applying the platform to support the City of Malibu’s recovery from the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires as a proof of concept. The project’s goal is to share the platform with recovery managers across hazards and geographies, with a vision of it becoming a standard tool for recovery following major disasters worldwide.