Rethinking Wildfire Risk: Modeling for Action, Not Just Prediction

Insights from FortressFire^® on the "Building Potential" Podcast with Hemant Shah

As wildfires continue to devastate communities across the West—including the most recent large-scale losses in Los Angeles—stakeholders from insurance and banking professionals to realtors and property owners grapple with a critical question: Are we modeling wildfire risk in ways that actually reduce it?

On a recent episode of Building Potential, FortressFire’s CTO John Wall and Chief Data Scientist Mike O’Dell joined host Hemant Shah in a conversation offered a powerful look at how FortressFire is pioneering a shift in how we understand, model, and manage wildfire risk—one grounded in physics, focused on individual structures, and built to support real-world action.

A Model That Starts Where Most End

While many wildfire models focus on predicting where a fire might start or its likely severity, FortressFire’s modeling begins with a different question: What will cause this structure to ignite—and what can be done to prevent that?

Our proprietary Property Ignition Model (PIM) uses advanced thermodynamics and energy modeling to simulate how a wildfire would interact with a specific property—taking into account terrain, wind, fuel loads, structural materials, and ember accumulation. It then pinpoints the precise vulnerabilities and prescribes tailored, physics-based mitigation actions to reduce ignition risk.

This structure-first approach flips the traditional hazard-in methodology on its head. Instead of relying on broad probabilistic assumptions, we assume that fire will at some point arrive—and focus on what it takes to protect what matters most.

From Modeling to Mitigation—and Monitoring

As John and Mike emphasized in the podcast, modeling isn’t the endpoint, but rather the starting point. At FortressFire, we use our models to design actionable mitigation strategies that property owners can implement immediately.

We’ve partnered with:

· Wineries in Napa and Sonoma that have faced repeated threats and insurance challenges

· Residential property owners looking to remain insurable amid a collapsing market

· Brokers and insurers who need verified evidence of reduced risk to support underwriting decisions

In each case, we move beyond analysis to implementation, working with property owners and service providers to reduce fuels, harden structures, and close the risk gap. And our work doesn’t stop there. We provide ongoing monitoring and protection services to ensure that mitigations are maintained over time and risk of loss remains low.

Real-World Results: Lessons from the Palisades Fire

Our back-tested models don’t just theorize risk, they predict outcomes. During the podcast, Mike shared results from a post-event analysis of over 12,000 structures impacted by the recent Palisades Fire. The PIM model accurately predicted the fate of nearly 90% of destroyed and undamaged structures—without knowing the outcomes in advance.

Just as important, our models help map structure-to-structure ignition chains, identifying dense clusters where risk compounds and where community-scale mitigations can have outsized impact.

This work reveals a crucial insight: wildfire loss isn’t just a matter of luck or location. It’s a matter of vulnerability. And vulnerability can be mitigated.

A New Mindset for Insurance and Community Resilience

Our podcast conversation ended with a call for change—not just in modeling practices, but in mindset. Protecting a single home is valuable. Protecting an entire neighborhood through cluster-based mitigation? That’s transformative.

Insurers, brokers, municipal leaders, realtors, HOAs, and fire agencies all have a role to play in shifting from a siloed, every-property-for-itself approach to a shared-resilience model. As John noted, the value of protecting a cluster is exponentially greater than protecting any single structure. And it's only possible with high-resolution, structure-specific modeling that guides and validates action.

FortressFire was founded on the belief that today’s science and technology can reduce tomorrow’s wildfire losses.

By combining detailed physics modeling, practical mitigation implementation, and continuous monitoring, we help property owners, insurers, and communities move from prediction to prevention—and from risk to resilience.

Link to Podcast: https://info.onarchipelago.com/building-potential-wildfires-special-ep-3-fortressfire

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