New U.S. Fire Administration Tool for Accessing Data on Fire Risk and Vulnerability

The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) has launched the Home Fire Fatalities and Social Vulnerability Explorer. This tool is part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Geospatial Resource Center, where emergency managers, researchers, and other public health and safety professionals can access world-class geospatial information, services and technologies to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate against all hazards.

The Social Vulnerability Explorer builds on USFA’s existing home fire fatalities data set by combining it with Social Vulnerability Index data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to:

• Assist in assessing potential underlying factors that might contribute to home fire fatalities.
• Raise awareness of fire risk and vulnerability at the national, state and county levels.
• Assist communities in creating targeted efforts to address fire prevention within vulnerable communities and at-risk groups.

You can access the tool from USFA’s Home Fire Fatalities in the News page or by going to FEMA’s Geospatial Resource Center:

1. Go to FEMA Geospatial Resource Center.
2. Select “Structure Fire” from the “Hazard Pages” menu.

On the Structure Fire page, along with the new Social Vulnerability Explorer, you can access many other geospatial tools related to fire hazards, including the American Red Cross’s Home Fire Risk Map and a collection of state and local agency maps exploring community structure fire hazards, fire department response times, wildfire risks, hazard mitigation after wildfire disasters and more.