Congratulations to CEE Professor Marta C. Gonzalez, who—along with City & Regional Planning Assistant Professor Maryam Hosseini—has been awarded a Lau Grant for Just Climate Futures to support her research on wildfire risk mitigation. The project, titled "Multiscale Mitigation of Wildfire Risk Vulnerabilities in the Natural and Built Environments," brings together tools from spatial computing, AI, and urban planning to address one of California's most pressing climate-related threats.
The team will develop scalable approaches to both regional and neighborhood-level wildfire preparedness. At the regional scale, Professor Gonzalez and collaborators—including Professor Emeritus John Radke and Ph.D. student Minho Kim—will adapt and test firefighting strategy software previously used in Spain to inform fire suppression efforts in California. Locally, they will use computer vision to identify hazards around homes in Berkeley and estimate shared risk among neighbors.
The goal is to integrate these technologies into an interactive decision support system for emergency responders, planners, and residents, promoting smarter, risk-informed decisions.
Funded by the Arcus Foundation endowment, the Lau Grant program supports CED faculty projects that address climate change with a focus on equity and action. Professor Gonzalez and her team will collaborate with CED students throughout summer and fall 2025, with research findings to be shared in spring 2026 via an exhibition, symposium, demonstration pavilion, and scholarly publications.
Check out the full news release on the Institute of Transportation Studies Website.