Comprehensive solutions for assessment, planning, mitigation, restoration and rebuilding
Reduce Risk and Increase Resiliency
The devastating effects of wildfires—most recently experienced by the multiple outbreaks in Southern California—can leave lasting impacts on communities, businesses, infrastructure and property. With the increase in wind velocity and drought, firestorms burn more frequently and intensely, damaging land and property faster than ever. This presents tremendous challenges to utilities and government agencies that provide vital services to the public. These organizations must grapple with disaster complexity and interconnectedness of people, assets and environments.
Wildfire management challenges include:
• Inadequate planning and analysis of the wildfire lifecycle
• Lack of understanding around potential risks and hazards
• Untested, disconnected mitigation capabilities
• Communications silos and disjointed response and recovery
• Legacy methods, processes and data management
Utilities, local, state, and federal agencies alike need solutions that cover all aspects of wildfire management. This requires cohesive strategies that integrate people, processes and capabilities to increase readiness and resilience.
TRC provides trusted solutions to:
• Develop comprehensive planning
• Identify and prioritize high wildfire-risk areas
• Formalize prescriptive detailed mitigation strategies based on risk
• Develop rapid response plans and strategies
• Accelerate restoration, recovery and rebuilding
Our practitioners empower organizations with deep expertise and innovative tools to identify wildfire hazards, implement preventative mitigation measures and establish engagement protocols.
Experience and Expertise from the Backoffice to the Field
When disaster strikes, you need to be prepared to execute swift and flexible solutions that extend from the operations center to the field, from the executive to the customer. Our field teams deploy quickly and seamlessly integrate with your organization to complement and extend your organization’s capabilities. In addition, we maintain the skills, knowledge and technologies to help rebuild even stronger, with greater resiliency than ever before. Clients gain trusted capabilities with solutions that safeguard people, property and the environment.
With TRC, clients gain:
Tailored solutions and services
We develop detailed wildfire planning, mitigation, response and recovery strategies that align with your goals. Based on a thorough assessment, our practitioners develop tailored plans that align with specific operational needs, regulatory requirements and more.
Advanced technology and data services
Leverage cutting-edge solutions, including modern geospatial, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cloud computing, real-time analytics, and Lemur mobile mapping. Our consultants have extensive experience acquiring, curating, validating, transforming, and enriching data for various activities, including planning program delivery and response.
Multidisciplinary expertise
Our team combines industry knowledge with technical expertise. Practitioners have decades of experience in utility operations, disaster management, environmental services and more. Our multidisciplinary teams include industry experts, utility engineers, data scientists, project planners, compliance professionals and field operators.
Extended services
From air quality consulting to hazardous materials, vegetation management and waste management, health and safety programs, remediation and more, TRC’s wildfire solutions include the necessary services clients may not immediately recognize as essential.
Wildfire Risk Assessment and Planning
We identify high-risk areas and develop a comprehensive plan to address potential threats. Our team analyzes environmental issues and community values at risk to determine where wildfire mitigation efforts are needed. Our solutions include:
- Providing training, equipment guidelines, communication protocols, and oversight
- Establishing robust data management (including GIS)
- Implementing new or revised procedures and policies
- Developing procedures for long-duration, multi-jurisdictional events
- Climate Advisory Services
- Building a leadership team (safety, quality assurance, scheduling, costing, data management, forestry, planning, permitting)
- Updating plans based on lessons learned
- Evaluating existing prevention, response, and preparedness capabilities
- Creating tailored wildfire management plans aligned with operational needs and regulations
Mitigation Strategies
We identify and catalog assets, networks and customer locations within extreme wildfire hazard areas to prioritize the most effective mitigation strategies. This can involve vegetation management, network hardening, undergrounding lines and public safety power shutoff during extreme conditions. Our solutions include:
- Staging equipment, materials, and personnel
- Establishing mutual aid agreements and communication protocols
- Proactive, data-driven vegetation management
- Protecting structures in wildfire-prone areas
- Creating defensible spaces around buildings
- Using fire-resistant construction materials
- Implementing fire-safe landscape designs
Utility Service Restoration
With decades of experience serving utility customers, TRC helps organizations repair assets and restore services from downed wires and damaged power lines, substations and transformers. We provide:
- Damage assessment and work order management
- Power system studies, storm hardening design and engineering power restoration plan
- Rapid deployment of support (usually in less than 24 Hours anywhere in the US)
- Geospatial & Land Surveying
- Electrical/telecom overhead and underground engineering and design
- Wires down and gas outage field support
- Hazardous chemicals cleanups (PCBs from transformers and substations)
Wildfire Materials Management
- Program Management
- Safety Planning and Monitoring
- Quality Control and Assurance
- Program Guidance Document Development (SOPs, Action Plans)
- Data Management System Development (geospatial database)
- Planning and Permitting (City, County, State, Federal, CEQA, Biological, Cultural, Water Board, Air Quality)
- Community Outreach
- Field Surveys (desktop, boots on the ground, and/or drones)
- Construction Administration and Management
- Permit Compliance Monitoring During Construction
- Material Management (Staging, Testing, Processing, Transportation, Recycling, Beneficial Reuse, and Disposal)
- Value Engineering (Safety, Quality, Schedule, and Cost reviews for improvement)
Grant Management
- FEMA Public Assistance Program Support
- Funding acquisition, tracking, and management (FEMA PA)
- Project Development under FEMA public Assistance
- Preliminary Damage Assessments (FEMAPA)
- Organize and facilitate stakeholder meetings
Building, Facility and Property Damage
We add capacity to determine the extent of damage to structures and properties and plan remediation actions to get them to their pre-disaster state. Our solutions include:
- Hazardous materials cleanup
- Building habitability determinations
- Indoor air quality assessments
- Soil and water sampling/testing
- Human health risk assessments
- Rebuilding plans in compliance with the latest regulations and standards
- Development of remediation protocol and scope of work documents
- On-site project oversight and documentation
- Remediation assessment and verification
Environmental Health Safety and Sustainability
Our teams identify, assess and manage sites contaminated by hazardous materials with solutions that include:
- Air Quality Assessments
- Soot, ash and char assessments
- Data processing for insurers and organizations
- Contaminated sediment management
- Contaminated/hazardous sites monitoring
- Remediation engineering
- Industrial/oil and gas startup
- Operational readiness reviews
- Inspection and repair
- Pre-startup and startup operations support
Infrastructure Evaluation and Reconstruction
Damage to critical infrastructure, such as roads, bridges and utilities, requires specialized expertise. TRC offers:
- Structural assessment and repair planning
- Pre-qualified engineers supporting inspection and design
- Funding, tracking, acquisition and management ( Regional, State and Federal)
- Construction lending verification
- Levee failure assessment and repair planning
- Wastewater treatment facility assessment
- Construction Management and Inspection
- Metallurgical consulting
- Non-destructive testing
- Geospatial analysis and data capture
- Communication, marketing and facilitation
Lemur Mobile Mapping for Wildfires
During wildfires and other natural disasters, field crews can use Lemur mobile mapping to expedite damage assessments, create and track repair work orders and request debris removal, all with precise location intelligence. Data collection and reporting tools clarify response needs, accelerate recovery and enrich public communications. In addition, Lemur’s offline capabilities ensure teams have the data they need regardless of power or connectivity—which is unpredictable in disaster scenarios.
Lemur integrates enterprise apps and data with geospatial tools and technology, providing full operational visibility through a single solution. Lemur replaces legacy paper-based methods and multiple disparate point solutions, empowering field teams with on-device data governance and delivering real-time data to the back-office. It gives a modern approach to field service management that improves productivity, safety, accuracy and performance.
It supports the entire lifecycle of wildfire use cases, including:
- Damage assessment and response
- Vegetation management
- Leak survey
- Asset inspections and repair
- As-built documentation
- Pre-construction surveys
- Field sketches
- Maintenance and repairs
- Safety and compliance
Representative Projects
FEMA Support Maine
FEMA Support Maine Published
Hurricane Florence Recovery
Published
PSEG Hazard Mitigation
Published
Related Materials
OSHA Regulations for Protecting Employees from Wildfire Smoke
Published
Smoke-Related Air Quality Consulting Services
Published
Wildfires, like the recent outbreaks in Southern California, have devastating and lasting impacts on communities, businesses and infrastructure. As fires grow more frequent and intense, utilities and agencies face mounting challenges in managing interconnected systems and essential services. TRC stands ready to support your efforts in preparation, response, and recovery — contact us today.
Sharing Our Perspectives
Our practitioners share their insights and perspectives on the trends and challenges shaping the market.
Building a More Resilient New York
June 24, 2013
The aftermath of Super Storm Sandy, which caused devastation including property damage, mass power outages and loss of life, has caused us to rethink, entirely, how well prepared we are for these events which were previously thought to be anomalies but which result in long term remediation efforts.