Fire managers in the U.S. Southern Region face complex challenges regarding current and future wildland fire risk assessment and management. These challenges are compounded by increasing fire intensities due to accumulation of vegetative materials, continued residential growth into wildland fire-prone areas, and increasing firefighting costs. In response, The Southern Group of State Foresters manages and updates a multi-state wildland fire risk assessment for the 13 Southern states.

This critical assessment allows agencies and organizations at the national, state, and local levels to obtain a more comprehensive picture of what the overall potential is for wildland fire and its associated challenges. This project is called the Southern Wildfire Risk Assessment (SWRA). To find out the current status and the plan for the future of the SWRA review the 2010 SWRA - Moving Forward report.

The Southern Wildfire Risk Assessment project provides fire professionals and other stakeholders with a set of tools for evaluating wildland fire risk in a consistent manner across the region, with the ultimate goal of reducing the potential human, environmental, and property loss caused by wildland fires. Visit our About SWRA page for more information about the details of the SWRA project.

A variety of presentations and case studies are available that demonstrate the use of the SWRA for fire protection planning. This represent a range of different examples, including CWPP, fuels mitigation planning, Hazard Mitigation Planning and others. Visit our most recent User Meeting web page for lots of examples.