Is that risk map current? Depends on the state.

Colorado’s wildfire risk map was so inaccurate that state officials just about ignored it — for many years. The map was outdated, especially in western Colorado, where 3+ million acres of forest was covered in beetle-killed pines.

Carolina Manriquez, a lead forester with the state’s forest service, said they were supposed to use the state risk map, but they knew it was not accurate and therefore couldn’t rely on it. As the E&E News recently reported, an infusion of $480,000 in state funds resulted in a new Colorado map with updates including pine beetle damage and densely populated mountain towns.

Colorado wildfire risk viewer
Colorado wildfire risk viewer

Including 2017 and 2020, when annual wildfires burned more than 10 million acres, the last decade has marked some of the worst fire seasons in history. The risk is compounded by both climate change and growing wildland/urban interface areas, particularly in the West. Some states — including Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Texas — have moved toward ensuring their fire risk information and maps are updated and more accurate, displaying areas of highest risk and most in need of prevention and mitigation.

“There is a slowly growing push among different states to do this,” said Joe Scott, founder of Pyrologix in Missoula. The firm provides utility wildfire risk assessment, catastrophe modeling, fuels treatment prioritization and management, and exposure analysis.

To improve wildfire risk maps, many states are partnering with firms such as Pyrologix that can build public-access display of fire risk data and conditions. Using satellite imagery, census information, and other data, advanced tools can  determine locations and ranges of ignition probability and fire intensity, along with threatened resource types. Gregory Dillon, director of the USFS fire modeling institute, says the state-specific maps are not a duplication of federal fire maps, but rather a more refined product.

The Kansas Forest Service unveiled in September its new wildfire risk explorer, a digital interactive map that provides a detailed look at statewide fire risk. The effort began in 2018 after several major wildfires including the 2017 Starbuck Fire, which burned some 500,000 acres and destroyed or damaged more than $50 million worth of livestock, fencing, and other resources.

“A lot of state-led efforts are trying to communicate to  communities and residents about the risk to private property or municipalities,” said Jolie Pollet, wildfire risk reduction program coordinator at the Department of the Interior.

That’s slightly different from federal mapping efforts focused on protecting federal lands, Pollet said. State-focused mapping can assess evacuation routes, encourage homeowners to reduce their  risk, and improve prepared applications for federal grants. State improvements such as those in Kansas also help forestry and fire officials allocate limited resources to focus on the highest priority areas.

North Carolina: Great Lakes Fire burning in footprint of 2012 fire

Managing fires is a traditionally on-the-ground profession that adapted quickly to the value of aerial resources. On the Great Lakes Fire in North Carolina, listed at 7000 acres yesterday, a range of sky-based tools help convey the current status, even from a continent away.

For one, there’s avionics tracking — such as that provided by FlightRadar24. A screen shot just past noon conveys a circle significantly larger than the fire footprint reported the night before.

A screen shot of FlightRadar24, with air traffic above the Great Lake Fire, at 1244 EDT, April 21, 2023.

Some seven hours later in the shift, at 1724 EDT, the aerial observation ship is circling tighter and to the north.

A screen shot of FlightRadar24, with air traffic above the Great Lakes Fire, at 1244 EDT, April 21, 2023.

Switching to VIIRS satellites, the heat signature shows growth (and likely burnouts) in the past six hours (the brighter red, with the lighter yellow being 24 hours old). Using the Area tool built into NASA Lance FIRMS site, a rough (and likely large) estimate puts the fire at 30,000 acres.

VIIRS heat detection and estimated perimeter of 30,000 acres (which may be exaggerated by heat from the smoke column).

Switch to the toolset shared via the Risk Management Assistance Dashboard and one can overlay fire histories (the black solid line) … and lo and behold, the current estimated perimeter seems to align with the Dad Fire, a 21,000-acre fire in 2012, as well as prior fuel treatments to the north and south.

One additional tool is the mapping, forecasting, interpretation, and messaging of smoke and its impacts … as shared here via a Twitter post from the N.C. Air Quality Forecast Center.

We echo what the Air Quality center notes in its tweet: this is a developing situation, and the maps shared here are interpretations of what is certainly more challenging, and being more accurately portrayed, on the ground and in the air above the Croatan National Forest.

04/28 UPDATE:  The Great Lakes Fire remains at 32,400 acres with 30 percent containment, according to Inciweb updates. They got a little rain this morning and more is forecast over the weekend. At this morning’s firefighter briefing, meteorologist Scott Kennedy said, “I’m disappointed by the amount of rain over the fire,” referring to last night’s precipitation of approximately ¼ inch of precipitation — or less. We need a lot more rain to saturate the fire that is burning underground.” The fire is suspected to be human-caused and is still under investigation. It’s burning in pocosin swamp and mixed fuels within and around the footprint of the 2012 Dad Fire, which burned roughly 21,331 acres. Previous prescribed burning by the U. S. Forest Service helped slow fire spread this week by reducing the amount of burnable vegetation.

INCIWEB PHOTO, Great Lakes Fire.

New real time mapping system used on Cave Fire

Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System (FIRIS)
An example of an output from the Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System (FIRIS) used on the Cave Fire near Santa Barbara, CA November 26, 2019. The dots with arrows represent weather stations. Inciweb.

A new real time wildfire mapping system was used on the Cave Fire near Santa Barbara, California this week.

In September the Orange County Fire Authority began a 150-day pilot program to use and evaluate the Fire Integrated Real-Time Intelligence System (FIRIS). The program got off the ground thanks to funding secured in the 2019-2020 California state budget by Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-Laguna Beach).

The system utilizes a fixed-wing aircraft equipped with infrared and radar sensors that can see through smoke. The plane provides real-time fire perimeter mapping and live high definition video to support supercomputer-based wildfire predictive spread modeling.

(Click here to see all articles on the Cave Fire, including the most recent)

FIRIS fire wildfire mapping real time
Screenshot of aircraft featured in the FIRIS B-Roll video.

A supercomputer at the University of California San Diego runs WIFIRE spread projections based on fire perimeter data collected by the aircraft. The output estimates where the fire will be in the next six hours. The fire spread model adjusts for successful fire suppression actions by firefighters on the ground and in the air. This intel allows for more timely and accurate decision making for resource allocation and evacuations.

flight path N4717V fire mapping
The flight path of N4717V, a Turbo Commander 690, also known as “AC90”. It was orbiting over the Cave Fire at 12,400 feet on November 26, 2019. Flightaware map.

AC90 mapping aircraft wildfire
The FIRIS aircraft, shown as “AC90”, was over the Cave Fire along with two S-2T air tankers, at 7:52 a.m. November 26, 2019. Flightradar24

If I am correctly interpreting the WIFIRE product at the top of this article the system predicted that the Cave Fire would grow from 4,994 to 8,880 acres over a 90-minute period beginning at 10:56 a.m. on November 26, 2019. Spot fires were predicted more than a mile ahead. However, decreasing winds that day slowed the spread. A weather station in San Marcos Pass about three miles northwest of the fire recorded sustained wind speeds from 1 to 5 mph between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Rain beginning at 2 a.m. November 27 stopped  the spread at 4,330 acres.

Weather San Marcos Pass
Weather at San Marcos Pass, November 26-27, 2019.

The video below is “B-Roll”, that is, unedited footage of the FIRIS system. The first 6.5 minutes are simply images of aircraft, but after that you will be able to look over the shoulder of the imagery technician as he observes infrared imagery of a fire, manually interprets the heat signatures, then traces the fire perimeter on the screen. That perimeter could then be electronically sent to the super computer in San Diego County which would run a fire spread model to predict what the fire will do in the next six hours.

Our attempts to obtain more information about FIRIS from personnel on the Cave Fire that used the system were not successful.

PG&E launches satellite wildfire alert system

PG&E fire detection and alert system
PG&E fire detection and alert system. PG&E illustration.

The following information was released by the California-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company which describes a system they have developed to extract near real time fire detection data from satellites, such as the GOES 16 and the new GOES 17. Scott Strenfel, a Senior Meteorologist at PG&E, said   they are planning to make the data public within a month or two, which may be the first public tool available with GOES-R fire detections.

SAN FRANCISCO –– After several years of testing and development, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has deployed the PG&E Satellite Fire Detection and Alerting System.

The Satellite Fire Detection and Alerting System is a state-of-the-science program that incorporates data from the two new GOES satellites, as well as three polar orbiting satellites, to provide PG&E with advanced warning 24/7 of potential new fire incidents. The satellites are operated by the United States’ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service division.

“This capability offers first-of-its-kind situational awareness by providing a live feed from the satellites to our Wildfire Safety Operations Center. Emerging technologies such as this are another way we are working to reduce wildfire risk and protect our customers and our communities,” said Sumeet Singh, Vice President of PG&E’s Community Wildfire Safety Program.

The PG&E Meteorology Team led development of the program in collaboration with experts in the satellite fire detection field from the University of Wisconsin–Madison Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC). The system became fully operational in late June.

PG&E fire detection and alert system
PG&E fire detection and alert system.

Working with the SSEC, PG&E developed a dedicated and proprietary data pipeline that provides fire detection data as fast as every minute. An internal web application allows staff at PG&E’s Wildfire Safety Operations Center to track fire progression as well as the intensity of fires in near real time. The system also generates new fire alerts via email and on an app. The system has already detected hundreds of fires since it began limited operation in February.

If a fire is detected from two or more satellites, such as GOES-16 and 17, then confidence is high of an actual fire in the area. In many cases this system is expected to provide an early, if not the first, indication of an incident.

Community Wildfire Safety Program

By the end of 2019, PG&E plans to have at least 600 weather stations and 100 high-definition cameras in high fire-threat areas. These new installations are one of the additional precautionary measures the company is implementing following the 2017 and 2018 wildfires to further reduce wildfire risks.

Researchers demonstrate that it is possible to accurately measure wildfire rate of spread from an orbiting aircraft

measure wildfire rate of spread from aircraft
Figure 3. Fire spread sequence for Detwiler Fire. Active fire fronts and fire spread vectors are portrayed for the seven-image sequence on 20 July 2017. The background image is a fusion of NAIP colour (depicting vegetation fuels and topography) with a colour density sliced version of the seventh FireMapper 2.0 image.

Now that federal land management agencies are being forced by an act of Congress to begin providing to fire managers the real time location of fires and firefighting resources, it opens a range of cascading benefits beyond just enhancing their safety and situational awareness.

Fire Behavior Analysts that could continuously observe the fire with infrared video from a manned or unmanned aircraft orbiting above the air tankers could make much more accurate, valuable, and timely Fire Behavior Forecasts. The fire spread computer models could be fine-tuned to be more accurate and their outputs could be displayed on the map along with the locations of firefighters who carry tracking devices, enabling the Operations Section Chief to make better-informed strategic and tactical decisions.

But until recently it was not known if georeferenced infrared imagery from an orbiting aircraft was accurate enough to be used for determining the rate of spread.

The short answer is, yes. A paper published last week indicates that the accuracy is sufficient. (FYI — the document is written for other scientists and not for practitioners.)

Now the question becomes, will the federal land management agencies actually implement the program to track the real-time location of fires and firefighters, or will they slow-walk it into oblivion like the Congressional orders to purchase a new air tanker, convert seven HC-130H Coast Guard aircraft into air tankers, and the repeated requests from the GAO and Inspector General to provide data about the effectiveness of firefighting aircraft?

measure wildfire rate of spread from aircraft
Figure 7. Wildfire spread during the Rey Fire on 21 August 2016. (a) Time 1 fire front. (b) Time 2 fire front (7 min later). (c) Fire spread vectors and ROS statistics. (d) 3-D perspective image depicting active fire front and spread vectors. (e) Histogram depicting frequency distribution of ROS estimates for all spread vectors in the two-pass imaging sequence.

Unfortunately even though United States taxpayers funded the research through the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation (grant number G00011220), only some of us will be able to read the fruits of the research since it is not an Open Access document. After it is viewed 50 times free access will be shut off.

Open Access logo
Open Access logo

It is published at Taylor and Francis Online, a private company based in the United Kingdom. So by the time you read this the company may be charging people to read the document. (UPDATE at 7:42 a.m. MST February 21, 2019: General access to the document has been shut off. The company is now charging $50 to view it for 24 hours.)

Not allowing taxpayers to read government funded research unless they pay for it again is reprehensible.

The document is at Taylor and Francis Online: Assessing uncertainty and demonstrating potential for estimating fire rate of spread at landscape scales based on time sequential airborne thermal infrared imaging. By: Douglas Stow, Philip Riggan, Gavin Schag, William Brewer, Robert Tissell, Janice Coen, and Emanuel Storey

Wildfire history of California, interactive

California fire history map
California fire history map by Capital Public Radio. All fires in Southern California 1878-2018. Click to enlarge.

We often hear, “It’s not IF an area will burn, but WHEN”.

Capital Public Radio has developed an interactive map showing the footprints of wildfires that have occurred in California since 1878. You can see all of the fires at once, or individual years, and the map is zoomable. (The map may not display well in all browsers. It seems to work best using Firefox.)

I may or may not have spent too much time looking at these maps.

California fire history map San Diego County
California fire history map by Capital Public Radio. San Diego County, 2003. The largest fire is the Cedar Fire. Click to enlarge.