Wildfire Management

Announcements Santa Barbara County's Largest Fire Gets Help with GIS—Podcast by William Boyer and Zacharias Hunt ESRI Provides First Responders With GIS Mapping for Better Fire Response and Planning—FDNNtv.com

Land management agencies use GIS in numerous ways to make better informed decisions before, during, and after a wildfire [PDF] or prescribed fire incident.

Wildfire Planning

GIS allows fire managers to effectively make plans in advance of a wildfire to understand the physical features and the relationships that influence fire behavior. Factors like slope steepness, aspects, and vegetation can be viewed and overlaid to determine where intense fires may occur. High-value resources, such as critical wildlife habitat, endangered plants, cultural resources, and housing developments, can be compared with historical fire locations and potential ignition sources (power lines, roads, industrial areas, railroad tracks, housing developments, etc.).

GIS displays numerous values and their relationships to identify fire management needs for fire prevention, vegetation management, fire suppression, and other required activities.

Wildfire Prevention

GIS-based prevention programs can target areas that pose the greatest potential for resource loss. When intense fire areas (highly flammable landscapes) exist near high-risk areas (ignition sources) and high values, fire prevention becomes critically important. Historical fire information can be viewed with other landscape information. Each historical fire point can be quickly queried (in the database) to examine the exact cause and size of each fire.

Vegetation Management

Based on the GIS analysis, areas that require vegetation management treatments (prescribed fire, mechanical treatments, etc.) can be viewed and modeled. GIS assists fire managers in selecting prescribed fire and vegetation management projects that provide the most benefit and are of greatest priority.

Fire Suppression

Wildfire suppression benefits from a number of technologies. When these technologies are integrated into a comprehensive system, they provide multiple benefits. Key fire suppression [PDF] technologies include

• Remote sensing
• GPS and AVL
• Modeling
• Aerial photography
• Computer-aided dispatch (CAD)
• Wireless data communication

These technologies work together as a single, seamless system when integrated with GIS. All of the prescribed features and functionality can be displayed and enhanced within a geospatial framework.

Wildfire Rehabilitation

GIS is particularly useful to document fire effects, what was accomplished, how long it took, and what rehabilitation measures are needed to stabilize the area for regrowth. Wildfire rehabilitation standards can be determined and displayed with GIS. Vegetation, slope, and other information can be viewed to identify possible critical rehabilitation location needs. Imagery can be analyzed to determine where fires burned intensely, where rehabilitation requirements may be substantial, or where winter rains might result in unacceptable flooding.

Solutions

ESRI offers software solutions that meet the needs of fire response, fire planning, and fire ground command.

• ArcInfo
  
• ArcView with the ArcView Spatial Analyst and ArcView Network Analyst extensions
• ArcGIS Engine

Case studies on Fire Management.