Wildland Fire Decision Support Tools Managing Long Duration Wildfires Workshop Salt Lake City, UT

1. Wildland Fire Decision Support Tools Managing Long Duration Wildfires Workshop Salt Lake City, UT April 30 – May 1, 2008 Missoula, MT May 6-7, 2008

2. Wildland Fire Decision Support System • National Fire and Aviation Executive Board chartered WFDSS in June 2005: • Goal: • develop a scaleable decision support system for agency administrators, • utilize appropriate fire behavior modeling, economic principles, and information technology, • support effective wildland fire decisions consistent with Resource and Fire Management Plans.

3. Planned WFDSS Development and Expansion • Create a process that: • Documents strategic decisions, • Provides decision support, • Is linear, scalable, progressive, and responsive to fire complexity, • Is applicable to all wildland fires as a single process, • Is spatially oriented, graphically displayed, with no reliance on large text input requirements, • Is Internet-based to provide risk and decision sharing simply and efficiently.

4. Planned WFDSS Milestones • Accelerated working decision components available June 2007, • Working prototype available June 2008, • May have limited structural components available, • Will be tested as replacement for WFSA, WFIP, LTIP, • Delivery of WFDSS by February 2009.

5. Decision Support Tools • FSPro • FARSITE • FlamMap • BehavePlus • RERAP • FireFamilyPlus • NFDRS • Fuel Moisture Monitoring • Wind modeling • RAVAR • SCI

6. FSPro – Fire Spread Probability • A modeling tool developed from FARSITE, FlamMap, and RERAP applications, • Calculates and maps fire spread probability across a landscape and uses many weather scenarios, • Is probabilistic not deterministic, • Gives managers: • Visual indication of probabilities of spread, • Supports formulation of strategy and tactics, • Helps prioritize actions, • Is not a fire spread perimeter map, • Available in WFDSS.

8. Fire Spread Probability Results What is the probability of each point of concern being affected by fire?

10. Poe Cabin – 08/08/07

11. Summer 2007:Pattengail Fire results helped Area Command decided to move resources to another fire for a few days*FSPro results displayed in WFDSS on Topographic map

12. Summer 2007:Meriwether Fire results also helped decision makers relocate resources*FSPro results displayed in WFDSS with fire perimeter and Google Earth

13. Example – GACC OR AA Use FSPro 30 Day Simulation for Western Montana Briefing Tool Lessons Learned: Pattengail Fire, Meriwether Fire Poe Cabin Fire

15. For more information and login IDs, go to: http://wfdss.nwcg.gov

16. FARSITE – Fire Area Simulator • A two-dimensional fire growth simulation model, • Computes fire behavior and spread over a range of time under heterogeneous conditions of terrain, fuels, and weather, • Is deterministic not probabilistic, • Provides information on: • Where will the fire go? • How large will the fire get? • When might the fire reach a location? • When weather data quality is high – is the best tool.

18. FlamMap – Spatial fire behavior mapping • A spatial fire behavior mapping and analysis program, • Provides a landscape view, more simplistic, • Computes potential fire behavior characteristics, • Uses constant weather and fuel moisture conditions, • Minimum travel time and treatment optimization options are available, • Can be viewed as “spatial Behave” or map-based Behave, • Does not go into the same depth as Behave.

19. FlamMap - Minimum Travel Times MTT - Dammeron Fire 2005 S UT

22. BehavePlus – Fire behavior modeling • A modeling system that is a collection of models, • Describes fire behavior, fire effects, and the fire environment, • Deterministic not probabilistic, • Produces tables, graphs, and simple diagrams, does not produce maps, • Very detailed for one location.

23. FireFamilyPlus – Fire Climatology and Occurrence • A program that combines fire climatology and occurrence analysis capabilities into a single program, • Allows users to summarize and analyze weather observations, link weather with fire occurrence, and compute fire danger indices for NFDRS and CFFDRS, • Provides weather data for FARSITE and FlamMap, • Limited to weather and fire danger information only, not fire behavior.

24. RERAP – Rare Event Risk AssessmentProcess • A program to estimate the risk of a fire reaching a specific point of concern, • Incorporates weather, fuels, topography, and fire spread model, • Produces straight line transects, • Is probabilistic, not deterministic, • Weather data dependent, • Requires significant user interpretation and adjustment.

25. Projected fire area, Probability of fire movement

27. Idaho Season Ending Event Probability

28. NFDRS – National Fire Danger Rating System • A system for predicting relative fire danger and potential for wildland fires, • Provides daily fire danger indices and components, • Allows seasonal tracking of trends and identifies periods of highest concerns, • Based on a single daily weather observation, • Limited to accuracy of weather data.

29. Seasonal Severity

30. WindWizard- Gridded wind model • Gridded wind model that includes WindWizard and WindNinja, • Provides gridded wind data that can be used for visualization, display and review, and input to fire behavior models, • Highest resolution wind data – displays effects of terrain on wind, • Useful for identifying where fire intensity may be highest, spread rates may be highest, and where spotting may occur, • Increases accuracy of FARSITE and decision making.

31. WindWizard – Boise National Forest

32. WW - South Canyon Fire (displayed in Google Earth) WindWizard – South Canyon Fire, Colorado

33. Fuel Moisture Monitoring • Process for monitoring and tracking both live and dead fuel moisture contents, • Allows daily, weekly, monthly, and seasonal tracking, • Provides input for fire behavior models, • Provides indicators of fire behavior potential and long-term drought conditions, • Limited by data quality.

34. Summary • Decision support is markedly important to fire management success and useful at all levels, • Decision support tools provide a range of information, from subjective to quantitative long-term analyses, • Decision support tools incorporate science and technology to reduce uncertainty, better understand complexity and risks, help develop management strategies and operational tactics, and define the situation, • Decision support information does not make decisions, only facilitates them, • Don’t be hesitant to ask for and use decision support information.