Student innovation connects wildfire resilience, safety to home design

Two UBC Okanagan engineering students are transforming classroom research into a practical tool for communities facing increasing wildfire risk. 

Under the supervision of Dr. Qian Chen, Miracle Kabano and Samantha Krieg co-authored a new paper outlining the Wildfire-resilient and Sustainable Evaluation Framework for British Columbia (WiSE-BC).  

The study appears in Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering and builds directly on the students’ earlier success designing EcoHaven, a modular home that won international recognition for wildfire resilience and energy efficiency. 

The EcoHaven project—developed in collaboration with Thompson Rivers University faculty Dr. Dale Parkes and Dr. Hossein (Sayed) Banitabaei, along with a multidisciplinary student team and industry partners—earned second place in the US Department of Energy’s 2024 Solar Decathlon Design Challenge.  

Designed for Honour Ranch, a retreat near Ashcroft, BC, that supports veterans and first responders, EcoHaven combines wildfire-resistant materials, net-zero energy systems and affordability suited to BC communities. 

When Dr. Chen and her students later developed WiSE-BC, they used EcoHaven as a test case to evaluate the framework’s real-world potential.  

WiSE-BC applies the analytical hierarchy process, a structured decision-making method that allows scalability and adaptability depending on project size and stakeholder priorities. This makes it suitable for both single-family builds and community-scale planning. 

The results showed that WiSE-BC can help builders and designers identify trade-offs early, balancing emissions, cost and resilience at the concept stage.  

In practical terms, that means reducing design time and construction costs while improving sustainability and fire-safety outcomes. 

“With WiSE-BC, we wanted to explore and bring attention to an industry gap of both wildfire resilience and sustainability in design,” says Kabano. “Presenting our research at the Canadian Society for Civil Engineering conference was an incredible opportunity to help BC communities and developers make better design decisions in the early stages of a project.” 

“British Columbia urgently needs housing that can withstand climate extremes,” adds Dr. Chen, Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering. “WiSE-BC provides a roadmap for sustainable design that can be adopted by builders today, not years from now.” 

Krieg says leading the EcoHaven project and co-authoring WiSE-BC revealed how student-driven collaboration can have lasting changes. 

“It showed me the material impact that students can have on the world when they work together and strive for something greater,” Krieg says. “By translating that work into research publications that offer practical solutions for industry, we hope to inspire others to build better in BC.” 

She adds that the experience shaped her career ambitions. 

“It inspired me to pursue a doctorate and continue investigating the intersection of sustainability and disaster resilience,” she says.  

The same student research group is now developing two additional papers based on the EcoHaven design and a related project from the previous year. As housing demand and wildfire threats continue to rise, the team hopes WiSE-BC and its successors will guide municipalities, homebuilders and policymakers toward practical, evidence-based design solutions.