Climate-Driven Changes in Wildfire Hazard and Implications for Resilient Building Design

Wildfires pose a significant hazard to buildings and communities located at the wildland–urban interface (WUI) in Canada. Climate change is expected to intensify the duration, frequency, and severity of the wildfires. Current hazard assessments rely on historical conditions and may underestimate future hazard. This study adjusts fire intensity in national wildfire hazard maps to reflect projected changes in fire weather. Analysis is conducted for 393 National Building Code of Canada (NBC) reference locations under a 2.5 °C of global warming scenario, which corresponds to a 50-year future time-frame, a typical design life of buildings. The results show a strong upward shift in national hazard, with the number of locations in the “High” hazard class nearly doubling from 28 to 53. These findings highlight the need to integrate climate-informed hazard projections into future hazard mapping, building codes, and resilience planning. To date, no large-scale Canadian study has examined how climate-driven changes in wildfire hazard may influence the application of building design guidance at the national scale. This study provides an assessment of hazard sensitivity to climate change, highlighting the importance of considering projected fire weather conditions in national hazard assessments.