A new program hopes to help Canadians calculate the risk of losing their home to wildfires and protect themselves from “acts of God.”

“We wanted to empower Canadians to be able to get insights on their wildfire risk … (and) we wanted to offer something also for individuals so that everybody can do something about their fire risk,” explained Gio Roberti, the CEO of AISIX Solutions.

The WildfireScore Consumer App uses information similar to that used to calculate insurance premiums and provides the risk on a scale of one to five. This score provides insight into the different ways fires can start and spread near properties nationwide.

It considers variables including historical fire activity, the likelihood of a fire being caused by a human — versus a natural occurrence, such as lightning — and factors that determine how rapidly a wildfire can spread. These factors include hills and slopes, as well as weather conditions, including wind which tends to blow flames and spread fires.

People who receive their wildfire score can also choose to spend $20 on a probability report, forecasting rises over 30 years.

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“We decided to do 30 years because it’s sort of the average duration of a mortgage in Canada. So that a homeowner can understand what is the probability of being impacted by a wildfire during the duration of their mortgage,” the app’s CEO explained.

“It’s a similar type of information used by insurance companies to price premiums and policies,” he continued.

Prior to this, he said, there were no publicly available programs in Canada to determine the likelihood of wildfires on this scale.

The program comes as communities across Canada are seeing increasingly fiery springs and summers.

B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Alberta saw an increase in the amount of area burned last year than the average amount over the last decade, according to data from Natural Resources Canada.

Nationally, there were 5,508 fires reported as of last November, 161 more than the reported 10-year average.

Generally, wildfires tend to occur in rural northern communities, which Roberti said lines up with where users are calculating the score.

“Lots of people are using it,” he explained. “I will say many people have been looking at their cabins in the woods — because of course, it’s where the fire probability is higher.”

New features will continue being added to the program, Roberti added. These will include projections showing different possibilities depending on the progression of climate change and an early warning system alerting residents of high fire probabilities.

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