Designing the Future of Wildfire Risk Management

The Wildfire Design Industry is an evolving concept founded on the recognition that members of the wildfire management community are most correctly identified as designers on scales ranging from micro to macro. 

Design, in the general sense, is defined by deciding what should exist in the world and making decisions about how to bring it into existence.

Being a designer has been professionalized in a wealth of different ways. However, design is first and foremost an innate human ability. Designing is then something wildfire professionals cannot help but do, even if they do not realize they are doing it.

Wildfire Design Industry first positions itself in the important role of revealing the prevalence of designing throughout the wildfire community to bring to the fore how wildfire professionals actively design the future through the design of the present. 

Unnoticed and overlooked, the force of design still exists, but it is rudderless and its power unseen. Recognized and embraced, the force of design is wielded and becomes an intentional and purposeful practice for shaping the future of wildfire risk management, the landscapes it touches, and the lives of those who must live with its consequences.

Wildfire Design Industry serves to advocate for uncovering and highlighting design’s presence in wildfire throughout the community, making knowledge of it prevalent, and creating a wildfire design practice. These goals will be part of a developing concept to begin the journey of accomplishing them throughout the community.   

Download the Zine (PDF). Pictures and text by Operational Coherence, except where otherwise noted.