Wildfire Prevention and Recovery
DRAFT CASE FOR SUPPORT
AT A GLANCE
The FIRE Solutions Initiative will develop and implement practical solutions that protect people, homes, infrastructure, ecosystems and economies. To achieve this, we will:
- Connect and catalyze innovative interdisciplinary research
- Attract and support more of the best faculty and students with endowments, fellowships and scholarships
- Develop advanced wildfire research and testing facilities
- Launch new certificates and educational programs
INITIATIVE LEADERSHIP
- Michele Barbato, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Christopher Cappa, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
ADMINISTRATIVE LEAD
- Richard Corsi, Dean, College of Engineering
TODAY'S CHALLENGES
As wildfires become more frequent and extreme around the globe, 2026 stands out as a catastrophic year.
Spain and France are experiencing their worst fire seasons on record. Across the continents, from Algeria, Indonesia, Australia and Argentina to Canada’s boreal forests, hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate. Millions more have faced dangerous levels of smoke exposure, which can have devastating impacts for thousands of miles.
For California, the twenty-first century is already the deadliest, most destructive wildfire era in its history. From Los Angeles to Big Sur, Napa Valley to the Tahoe Basin, wildfires are increasing in frequency, severity and cost — threatening lives and homes and scarring forests for decades, with cascading effects on air quality, human and animal health, natural resources, infrastructure, agriculture, insurance and the economy.
Governments, communities, utilities, insurers and industry urgently seek evidence-based solutions that can be implemented immediately.
REDESIGNING COMMUNITIES AS INTEGRATED WILDFIRE RESILIENT SYSTEMS
Current wildfire research on home construction largely seeks incremental improvements to home hardening and defensible space by refining individual materials, components or mitigation measures, which may increase a home’s probability of survival (the ability to resist ignition and maintain structural integrity) by roughly 10% - 50%. UC Davis researchers are proposing an integrated approach that will transform how buildings and their communities are designed, constructed, and validated — targeting building survival rates above 90%.
Earthen Construction: Soil-based construction resists fire damage while offering affordable, energy-efficient alternatives to conventional materials. Engineering faculty have already demonstrated earthen blocks’ resilience under prolonged exposure to very high temperatures.
Testing at Scale: As a next phase, structural testing and innovative building science control systems are needed at scale for new nation-wide design and construction building standards. Our goal is to evaluate buildings — and their interactions with surrounding vegetation — under realistic wildfire conditions.
Working Hand-in-Hand with Policy Experts: With rigorous data, we can assess the interactions among buildings, infrastructure, evacuation systems, development patterns and landscape processes — and transfer our research into policies, standards and building codes.
TOMORROW'S SOLUTIONS
UC Davis faculty across our schools and colleges are investigating new and ever more effective ways to prevent, manage, survive and recover from wildfires. The Fire Infrastructure, Resilience and Environmental (FIRE) Solutions Initiative will systematically integrate expertise and facilitate collaborations that accelerate the transformation of research into effective, implementable solutions, positioning UC Davis as the global leader in this urgent, rapidly evolving field.
UNITING RESEARCH BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER FIRE
New approaches to fire preparation, protection, recovery and implementation will optimize our collaborative approach. From fire- resilient structures and vegetation to precision technologies for early detection, real-time monitoring and optimized reforestation, to advances in fire- and smoke-related health care, creating scalable solutions sets this UC Davis initiative apart.
LEADING-EDGE TESTING FACILITIES
Enhanced wildfire testing facilities will expand our capacity to test building materials, structure-vegetation interaction and indoor air quality measures. These facilities will provide quantitative measurements of risk
reduction that can transform how policy decisions are made.
A NEXUS FOR POLICY, LAW, AND PUBLIC OUTREACH
Eighteen months after Los Angeles’ 2025 Eaton and Palisades fires, the home displacement rate remains near 65% as funding gaps, strict codes, bureaucratic backlogs and logistical hurdles to rebuilding persist.
Governments, insurers, utilities, land managers, businesses and homeowners must make high-stakes wildfire-related decisions with limited information about which strategies are most effective. Currently, the data needed to answer these questions are fragmented across agencies, and research efforts are dispersed across disciplines.
With better coordination, we can implement more solutions before disasters occur and reduce the impacts of increasingly severe fires.
KEY FUNDING PRIORITIES
Donor support will advance our highest funding priorities, including:
PEOPLE
GOAL: $17,000,000
- Endowed faculty directorship and seven professorships across our wildfire solutions areas
- Fire Solutions program staff
PROGRAMMING
GOAL: $18,000,000
- Catalyst funding and seed grants for promising early-stage research
- Graduate fellowships, undergraduate scholarships and experiential learning
- Annual symposium, visiting experts and a year-round public seminar series
EQUIPMENT AND TECHNOLOGY
GOAL: $13,000,000
- Sensors, drones, instrumentation and infrastructure for indoor and outdoor sensing and monitoring systems
- Global-standard fire resilience testing equipment for construction materials
- Medical equipment such as next- generation sequencing machines, mass spectrometers and microarrays
- Computing infrastructure to support wildfire data collection and sharing
FACILITIES
GOAL: $33,000,000
- Multi-phase development of testing facilities, from upgrading existing labs to a purpose-built testing and innovation facility
- Wildfire-resilient test house
- Outdoor wildfire living laboratory
DEFINING THE PATH FORWARD
The domain of impactful solutions to wildfires requires much more than a single discipline. The FIRE Solutions Initiative’s distinctive vision comprises leading faculty in multiple disciplines, facilities dedicated to leading-edge research, and a unique framework that will supercharge research to yield actionable solutions and education to train the next generation of experts.
THE FACULTY
Launching a new initiative begins with leadership. Our vision includes an endowed directorship and multiple endowed professorships with interdisciplinary designations in areas such as advanced wildfire detection and wildfire economics. Faculty-led pop-up institutes, conferences and similar gatherings will raise our global profile and facilitate collaboration with industry, state and federal agencies, and other universities.
THE FACILITIES
To increase our research capabilities, we will create a suite of purpose-built facilities and upgraded laboratories to develop, test, validate and implement solutions that reduce the devastation of direct fire and wildfire smoke impacts.
THE FRAMEWORK
By uniting solutions-focused research in fields such as engineering, health, agriculture and environmental sciences with expertise in law, economics and public policy, the FIRE Solutions Initiative will move proven solutions directly into building codes, insurance frameworks, economics, land-use policy and industry practice. The result will be healthier communities, safer homes and businesses, improved infrastructure, steadier insurance markets, cleaner air and more resilient ecosystems.
Organized around solution-focused areas, our interdisciplinary projects will advance preparation, protection, recovery and implementation to ensure that research that improves outcomes before, during and after disasters will benefit the public.
THE IDEAL UNIVERSITY TO ADVANCE FIRE SOLUTIONS
No other university combines our breadth of expertise with our proximity to California’s state policymakers — and to climate-diverse fire-prone landscapes.
The FIRE Solutions Initiative is unique among fire research efforts because its scope extends beyond traditional wildfire studies to incorporate our national expertise in agriculture, health, engineering, environmental science, law and policy.
Proximity to Sacramento positions us to move discoveries from laboratory research and fieldwork into building codes, land-use policy, industry standards, tools for firefighters and public health workers, and community practice.
Proximity to widely varying climate zones, including Mediterranean, chaparral and coniferous forest zones, allows us to study fire dynamics relevant to ecosystems around the world. UC Davis will provide the knowledge and the technology to support evidence- based solutions that allow California to lead the world in solving the ongoing wildfire crisis.
DEFINING ASSETS: THE UC DAVIS DIFFERENCE
Across our university, UC Davis’ distinguishing assets can be seen in the breadth of our research. Here are just a few examples of how our departments contribute solutions.
- Civil and Environmental Engineering: Creating fire-resilient building materials from earthen blocks can be an affordable, ecological way to build homes that withstand fire.
- Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering: Drones equipped with chemical sensors and cameras can monitor high-risk areas, detect fires before they reach a smoking point, and provide critical real-time information to firefighters as they combat fires.
- Agricultural and Resource Economics: Quantifying the benefits of reducing wildfire spread through forestry helps research to guide policy and investment.
- Native American Studies: Partnering with regional Native American tribes advances our understanding of the wisdom of cultural burns.
- Viticulture and Enology: Smoke taint from fires in Napa forced large and small vineyards to scrap 2020’s entire vintage. Protecting grapes from wildfire smoke has become a UC Davis - USDA collaboration.
- Firefighters Burn Institute Regional Burn Center: The center provides award-winning care and research that is leading to new solutions for the treatment of burn victims.
- Internal Medicine: The department developed a real-time action plan to help patients with lung disease cope with wildfire smoke and published a 10-step guide to protecting your lungs.
A DEFINING MOMENT
With every major fire, the UC Davis community springs into action. During the 2025 Los Angeles fires, our campus firefighters helped combat the blaze while faculty contributed research and support, from protecting Altadena’s trees to conducting mobile air quality testing, and distributed 1,200 effective air cleaners for use in shared indoor spaces from schools to shelters. Closer to home, when 2020’s Lightning Complex burned four of the natural reserves managed by UC Davis, volunteers rebuilt trails to reopen Stebbins Cold Canyon.
And when the 2018 Camp Fire — the deadliest, most destructive fire in California’s history — burned just 100 miles away, hazardous smoke drift forced UC Davis to close for nearly two weeks. We responded as Aggies do: with our hearts and minds.
Students, staff and faculty donated funds and volunteered their time and talent to recovery efforts. Across the university, researchers doubled down: from protecting smoke- damaged crops, to analyzing toxicants in contaminated soil and water, to better understanding beneficial burns. FIRE Solutions Initiative lead Michele Barbato — then in his first year as a UC Davis professor — launched his work on developing fireproof material for construction in rural areas at the wildland-urban interface. Since this defining moment in our campus’ history, an extraordinary breadth of researchers has come together to collaborate, create and share new solutions.
DEFINED BY UC DAVIS, REFINED WITH YOU
By strengthening our solutions-focused research with leading-edge facilities and funding, and by incorporating an emphasis on partnerships with decision-makers in policy, law and industry, the FIRE Solutions Initiative will amplify UC Davis’ work and empower change.
As volunteers, you, too, have an important role to play in the future of fire research.
Today, your feedback on this concept and its donor appeal will help us shape the project. Your perspectives will help shape messaging, refine priorities and strengthen pathways for implementing solutions beyond the university.
As we begin to promote this initiative, we ask for your partnership in raising awareness and engaging donor interest. You can help ensure the FIRE Solutions Initiative addresses the needs of the communities, industries and policymakers it seeks to serve while identifying opportunities for strategic partnerships and philanthropic investment. We would especially value your advice on where UC Davis can have the greatest impact, which solution areas resonate most with donors in your networks, and which organizations or individuals should become early partners in advancing this vision.