By Dr Kerryn Little
Wildfire preparedness in the United Kingdom is decades behind others – and we are running out of time to catch up.
In New Zealand where I grew up, I was part of a volunteer rural fire brigade that specifically fought wildfires, and a national Fire Danger Rating System communicated elevated wildfire danger warnings (think road signs of wildfire danger level, like Australia and the USA have).
Given the similarities between New Zealand’s and the UK’s maritime climate and vegetation, I had imagined the UK was similarly equipped to deal with wildfires.
When I moved to the UK in 2020, I learned this was not the case at all – despite the fact that the UK experiences more vegetation fires (~30,000 annually) and has a much higher population density within the ‘rural-urban interface’ where vegetation and people, property and critical infrastructure co-exist.
Wildfire wave
Historically, the UK’s temperate, humid climate and vegetation have protected us from vegetation drying out enough to produce large and intense wildfires. But we are increasingly seeing years with hot, dry extremes that prime our vegetation for wildfires to spread. The UK has been experiencing a ‘wildfire wave’ in 2026 amidst heatwave and drought conditions, with extensive wildfires across the full length of the country. This comes off the back of the UK’s worst wildfire year on record in 2025 that burned nearly 48,000 hectares.
For decades, fire behaviour prediction tools have been a cornerstone of wildfire management in many countries. These tools forecast how a fire will behave – its probability of ignition, flame length, rate of spread – and that information underpins everything from firefighter training and suppression tactics to prescribed burn planning and long-term mitigation strategy. Countries with serious wildfire exposure have invested accordingly: Australia, Canada, the USA, several Mediterranean nations and NZ have each developed fire behaviour models built for, or adapted to, their own landscapes and fuels. However, until recently, the UK has lacked such tailored fire behaviour prediction tools.
Wildfire tools
To address this critical gap in decision-making support, wildfire researchers across the UK came together to create FireInSite – the UK’s first fire behaviour prediction system. FireInSite is specifically designed for the UK’s vegetation, having been built on over four years of UK-wide intensive data collection. The freely accessible web interface overcomes barriers to accessing fire behaviour predictions, by integrating geolocated weather forecasts, topography and in-built fuel models. FireInSite was developed closely with groups like the UK’s Wildfire Tactical Advisors to meet their user needs from a wildfire behaviour prediction tool. It has been used operationally since 2025, with user feedback and validation demonstrating its success across the 2025 and 2026 extreme wildfire seasons.
This work sits within a wider effort at the University of Birmingham to take natural hazard risk seriously. Our Network for Emerging Systemic and Multi-Hazard Risk brings together researchers from engineering, climate science, economics, and social sciences to understand how hazards like wildfire don’t just burn land – they can cascade into failures of power networks, water supply, and transport infrastructure. Real disasters rarely respect disciplinary boundaries, and neither should our research.
Consecutive extreme wildfire years in the UK have provided the awareness of and momentum to address the UK’s wildfire preparedness, and we are starting to make significant progress, FireInSite being one aspect of that.
The challenge is to sustain this momentum to keep pace with a threat that isn’t waiting for us to catch up.
Dr Kerryn Little, is a Postdoctoral Researcher in PyroGeography at the University of Birmingham, and a Director on the Board of the International Association of Wildland Fire.
