A TRIP to FREDERICTON

Current Wildfire Analytics team members at the Wildland Fire Canada Conference in Fredericton, New Brunswick, October 2024. L to R: Katia Davi-Digui, Jared Randall, Jen Beverly, Carter Kuiper, Kennedy Korkola, Keara Lightning, Air Forbes. Not pictured: Sonja Leverkus and Sidra Ijaz Khan who attended the conference virtually.

by Air Forbes

​Last month, a group of Wildfire Analytics team members and alumni attended the Wildland Fire Canada Conference in Fredericton, New Brunswick. It was a great opportunity to share our projects with posters, oral presentations, a workshop, and countless conversations with conference attendees. 

I had a wonderful time sharing my most recent project in a full day workshop with Jen Beverly called “Wildfire exposure and directional vulnerability assessments: methods and applications”. 

 Workshop participants spent the morning learning about the theory behind wildfire exposure and how it has been applied in research and practice to date. In the afternoon portion of the workshop, I taught participants how to carry out exposure assessments using a new R package that I developed as part of my PhD work!

This was my first time developing and leading a hands-on workshop exercise. I provided participants with three example datasets and guided them through the process of  assessing landscape scale wildfire exposure in the province of Alberta. This was followed by a community scale exposure assessment at multiple transmission distances for an example community (Whitecourt, Alberta). Finally, we closed off the day with an assessment of directional vulnerability for Whitecourt as well.

Kicking off the afternoon portion of the workshop in RStudio.

A full house of workshop attendees working through the workshop materials. We had some great questions and participation from everyone in the room!

Although my R package is still in the final stages of development, the new users we trained encountered few issues. Participants brought a wealth of expertise and enthusiasm, and were graciously unphased by our over-capacity attendance and last-minute accommodations with extra tables.

I am very grateful for participant feedback and engagement during and after the workshop. This input will improve the R package and future workshops. Speaking of which, our next exposure assessment training event is planned for February 2025, at the University of Alberta. Check our website and  LinkedIn page for updates

​Following the workshop, I also shared my R package broadly with conference attendees during the poster session. Personally, I love the format of poster presentations and the conversations and connections they cultivate. Throughout the remainder of the conference, I took in some great presentations, met some awesome people, and visited with old friends. I also received the proofs for my first lead-author paper while attending the conference which was exciting (and stressful!). You can access this new publication in the International Journal of Wildland Fire.  The week was over before I knew it, which is often the case with conferences.

I should also note this was my first visit to Canada's East Coast, so I spent a few days at the end of the conference exploring New Brunswick beyond the confines of the Fredericton Convention Centre. Some highlights included staying at a bed and breakfast in a mansion built in 1875, seeing the Atlantic Ocean from “the other side” (I had only seen it from Europe previously), eating seafood, and exploring the art gallery! 

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick

Quaco Head Lighthouse on the Bay of Fundy near St. Martins, New Brunswick