Fire Modelling Foundations for Risk-Informed Decision-Making
When: 14-15 October 2026, 08:30 to 17:30 both days
Where: Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia
Cost: Free, by invitation only
Fire modelling promises better decisions on land use, risk mitigation, and infrastructure investment, but the field stays opaque to most of the people who have to act on its outputs. This workshop aims to close that gap.
Dr. Alexandra Syphard leads the two days. She is a global change and wildfire research scientist with more than 150 publications and nearly three decades of spatial modelling experience across academic, conservation, policy, and insurance contexts.
Day 1 alternates short lectures with group work on a single Modelling Problem Worksheet. Starting from a real management, policy, or emergency-response problem, each group will build a modelling approach and by the end of the day will be able to articulate the decision it supports, the question and scale, the model types and data required, the key assumptions and uncertainties, how to evaluate the results, how to communicate them to different audiences, and the conclusions the model should not be used to support. Guest speakers: Dr. Alejandro Miranda (Universidad de la Frontera) on fire data in Chile and Latin America, and Dr. María Barbosa (UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) on making uncertainty explicit.
Day 2 applies that foundation. The morning covers two case studies in depth: near-term management at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and long-term landscape futures in Southern California. The afternoon turns to Latin America and the Caribbean, with Dr. Miranda on regional data, Dr. Michel Valette (Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires) on co-designed modelling with communities, and a practitioner roundtable on early warning and operational decision-making moderated by Markristian Madrigada Pareja (Bomberos Voluntarios del Perú).
This event is by invitation only. If you would like to request an invitation, please email us at info@globalwildfirecollective.org