Fire Mapping

The foremost objective in fire operations is to provide for firefighter and public safety. A wide array of tools and technology are used by experienced fire management to corral wildfire.

Accurate mapping is an essential fire support tool and takes many formats and scales.

Map products include: tactical and strategic planning, aerial reconnaissance. identification of hazards (overhead wires, mine shafts, illegal dumps, etc.), growth perimeter maps by day, damage inventories, jurisdictional and ownership boundaries, transportation access routes and closures. Maps are derived from a variety of sources depending upon intended use and accuracy required. Generally, base maps are developed from current aerial and satellite photography. Both contour maps and flat base maps are used depending upon specific need.

Topographic Maps

For tactical mapping needs, the topographic base series is used to record known fire perimeters. Topographic maps aid strategy planning based on specific terrain conditions and plan safety zones and anchor points for firefighter safety.

Briefing Maps

A variety of different kinds of maps expanded to an extra large scale are used for pre-shift briefing, media interviews ,and public meetings. These maps will show planned and completed fire line by hand crews and mechanical equipment (such as dozers), perimeter of open line, drop points, and pertinent features for the given period. Accuracy of this data is verified by using global positioning system (GPS) equipment.

Infrared Mapping

Use of infrared imagery (a high-tech science unto itself) applied to accurately plot critical hotspots in the fire progression as well as to determine where to best position critical suppression forces. This data is collected by aerial and fixed surveillance and by use of prob-eye hand held scanners Is use of infrared technology valid and how accurate is it A very small sized hot ember can be detected and plotted. From this data availability, a ground firefighter can calculate accurate GPS coordinates to locate the hot spot in a minimum of time. Infrared mapping can also be used for mapping different fuel types, human activity, vehicle use and more depending upon heat signature on the imagery.

Fire Progression

Fire progression maps are used for plotting fire growth daily or working shift period. This mapping is used by operation planning specialists for the advanced tactical decisions, fire behavior modeling, and administrative analysis to.

Other Mapping Technology

Another kind of mapping that is used predicts general fire readiness on a weekly, monthly or season to season basis using a series that identifies fuel moisture by size class, fire related weather, and fire danger ratings by weather station zones, recording lightning strikes, and display live fuel moisture conditions and other fuel modeling parameters. Examples of this series of maps can be found at the following website - http://wfas.net.

You can also try Google earth. If it is not installed on your computer, you can download it here free of charge:http://earth.google.com/. You can find out what is happening on current fires by accessing inciweb.comand see a variety other map products used in wildland fire protection and management...Enjoy your review of some examples of fire mapping.