Wildfire Risk Management for Informal Settlements in Chile

Abstract

This thesis explores the critical intersection of wildfire risk and informal settlement development in Chile, focusing on the municipality of Viña del Mar. This city experienced the deadliest wildfires in the nation’s history in 2024 and holds the nation’s highest concentration of informal settlements. Despite this double vulnerability, the city has inadequately integrated wildfire resilience into its disaster risk management (DRM) framework, creating an urgent need for policy reform.

Through combined statistical and geospatial analyses, the author documents informal settlements’ expansion trajectories, especially between 2011 and 2024, and systematically assesses their wildfire exposure. Utilizing unregularized community datasets, wildfire risk classifications, and municipal planning documents, the analyses revealed that the growth of informal settlements outpaces regularization interventions. They also unveiled that all of the informal communities in the city, including their wildland-urban interface zones, face significant fire risk.

These findings further led the research to evaluate the current Chilean wildfire governance under Law 21.364 (enacted 2021) to provide comprehensive DRM across national, regional, and municipal administrative levels. Additionally, the study examines the disaster response mechanisms for the 2024 Chile Wildfires. This policy and evidence-based analyses identify inherent still reactive approaches to disasters even 4 years after the policy transition, and reveal a systematic marginalization of informal settlements.

Based on these findings, the research culminates in phase-specific actionable policy recommendations addressing the compound vulnerabilities of informal communities through: 1) enhanced shelter capacity estimation methodologies; 2) formalized private sector involvement; 3) integrated tsunami-wildfire warning systems; 4) periodic intergovernmental learning opportunities; and 5) technical support in reconstruction. Given the 2024 tragedy and Chile’s transition toward comprehensive DRM, these interventions are particularly crucial to accelerate its transition and establishment.