RAL SEMINAR: Ready, Set, Go - Without a Car? Integrating Wildfire and Behavioral Science in Evacuation Planning and Response
1:00 – 2:00 pm MDT
Tara Goddard
Tara Goddard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on safe roadway design and reducing traffic deaths and injuries, particularly how the interactions of transportation culture, behavior, and infrastructure affect pedestrians, bicyclists, and other vulnerable road users. Dr. Goddard has recent and on-going research related to wildfire evacuation, the rapid influx of technology in transportation, and other issues of engineering and planning in the current era of climate change. In Fall 2025, Tara will be returning home to California to join the faculty in the Department of Civil Engineering at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Transportation-related burdens of all sorts, including injuries and deaths, are born disproportionately among people of color, low-income and unhoused people, and people with disabilities. Acute disaster events further exacerbate these disparities, particularly related to disaster evacuation. While most evacuation planning and response focusing on private automobiles, approximately one-third of people in the United States do not drive. This non-driving status is often involuntary, due to age, health conditions or disabilities, income level, and more. Additionally, there are populations of people who do not have control over their disaster evacuation decisions or behavior, like incarcerated people and people in assisted living facilities and hospitals. A true “leave no one behind” approach requires a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the needs for risk communication, actionable weather information, transportation options, and assisted evacuation planning and processes. Through the stories of three recent wildfire evacuations – the 2021 Caldor wildfire, the 2024 Texas Panhandle fires, and the 2025 Los Angeles fires, Dr Goddard will engage the audience in conversation about avenues for actionable, community-supportive science to address knowledge gaps in the complex, interconnected challenges of equitable, safe, and effective wildfire evacuation.