After the FLAMES

Bringing justice to recovery — because rebuilding shouldn't leave the vulnerable behind

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🌎 Inspiration

When wildfires strike, they leave behind more than just scorched land—they leave behind deep inequities. Low-income families, seniors, immigrants, and renters often face the longest and hardest road to recovery. While response agencies focus on speed, equity often takes a back seat. Our team asked: What if recovery efforts could be both fast and fair?

After the Flames was born from that question.

💡 What It Does

After the Flames is a powerful wildfire recovery dashboard built specifically for the state of California. It is powered by authoritative datasets such as the CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) and CalFire’s Wildfire Perimeter GeoJSON data, enabling evidence-based planning and action. It overlays historical and real-time fire perimeter data with demographic vulnerability factors such as:

  • Percentage of renters
  • Elderly population
  • Households with no vehicle
  • Limited English proficiency
  • Median income

These factors are used to calculate an Equity Score for each ZIP code.

🧮 How the Equity Score is Calculated

We used a weighted formula that incorporates key vulnerability indicators to generate a normalized score between 0 and 100:

Equity Score = 
  (renterWeight × renter_pct / 25) +
  (elderlyWeight × elderly_pct / 10) +
  (lepWeight × LEP_pct / 15) -
  (incomeWeight × income / 10000)

Optional factors such as disabled population, shelter access score, and disaster history can be added for further nuance. The result is then normalized to a 0–100 scale, with higher scores indicating higher vulnerability. The higher the score, the more vulnerable the community. After the Flames then provides:

  • 🎯 Priority recovery recommendations (e.g., bilingual aid, shelter expansion, ADA compliance)
  • 📍 Map visualizations with timeline sliders and filtering
  • 📊 ZIP-code level vulnerability rankings
  • 📤 Exportable recovery plans for field deployment
  • 🔊 "Voices" dashboard to hear real audio stories of those impacted

🗺️ Screens and Features

  • Dashboard Tab: Interactive map + demographic filters + top vulnerable ZIP codes
  • Settings Tab: Adjustable weight sliders for customizing Equity Score calculations
  • Voices Tab: Audio submissions of real (mocked) survivor testimonies categorized by urgency or need
  • ZIP Recovery Plan: Automatically generated plan based on demographics

🛠️ How We Built It

🧠 Challenges We Ran Into

  • Finding and structuring accurate datasets that align geographically with wildfire-affected ZIP codes
  • Designing a score formula that balances multiple factors without bias
  • Making the app feel more human-centered and emotionally grounded

✅ What We’re Proud Of

  • Built a working, interactive dashboard in under 36 hours
  • Integrated equity as a first-class principle in disaster planning
  • Added a highly unique "Voices" layer, showcasing first-person narratives (synthetic but plausible)
  • Delivered both a policy-facing and citizen-facing tool

📚 What We Learned

  • Real-world problems don’t have clean datasets
  • Equity isn’t just an ethical concern, it’s a design constraint
  • Impactful design often comes from blending quantitative data with qualitative voices

🔮 What's Next

  • Connect with local agencies to test real deployments in wildfire-vulnerable zones
  • Add mobile-first features for field workers
  • Partner with CalFire or OES for data pipeline integration
  • Collect real community voices via Twilio or SMS API
  • Integrate LLM-powered summarization of audio logs for policy briefings

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