Southern Fire Exchange - Free Smoke Webinar

Establishing a National Methodology for Operational Mixing Height Determination

A free webinar from the Southern Fire Exchange 

Thursday, December 3, 2015. 1:00-2:30 PM ET

Presentations led by:

Matthew Fearon, Desert Research Institute

Robyn Heffernan, National Weather Service

Mixing Height is important for assessing smoke dispersion for prescribed fires and wildfires. This webinar will review and explain the strengths and weaknesses of several tested methods for determining mixing heights. The webinar will include discussion of the innovative Turbulent Kinetic Energy (TKE) method that may provide critical atmospheric information for predicting Dispersion. TKE represents the most robust method for determining Mixing Height while the Stull Method represents an alternative approach that may be more operationally feasible. The webinar will discuss both approaches for determining Mixing Height. In addition, National Weather Service programs for determining Mixing Height will also be described.

Questions? contactus@southernfireexchange.org

Registration required! 

http://mixingheight.eventbrite.com

Or scan the QR Code: 

IFTDSS Workshops at AFE Conference

WFM RD&A Staff will be holding 2 IFTDSS Workshops at the Association of Fire Ecology's 6th International Fire Ecology and Management Congress in San Antonio Texas on November 16, 2015. See the description of the workshop below and use the AFE Website to register to attend one of these workshops.

IFTDSS – Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System—1/2 day

This workshop entails basic training, demonstration and discussion regarding IFTDSS – The Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System. IFTDSS is a web-based software and data integration framework that organizes previously existing fire and fuels software applications to make fuels treatment planning and analysis more efficient and effective. IFTDSS provides a way for users to learn one interface, access a variety of data and models all in one place, and pass data (inputs and outputs) easily between models. The session will include hands on utilization of existing workflows in the application including burn plan preparation (using the 2014 Interagency Burn Plan Template), Hazard Analysis, and Risk Analysis. IFTDSS utilizes several well-known existing tools to calculate fire behavior, fire containment, fire effects, probability of ignition, fuel consumption, and fuel characterization. This workshop is appropriate for fire practitioners and managers that participate in burn plan preparation, fire hazard analysis, and risk assessments.

To get more information and register for one of these workshops visit - http://afefirecongress.org/workshops-2/

Fire Behavior Webinar/Workshop coming soon

Please register for Sharing Fire Behavior Practices & Lessons Learned Webinar on Nov 16, 2015 2:00 PM EST, 1:00 PM CST, 12:00 PM MST, 11:00 AM PST, 10:00 AM AKST at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/8009583037952390913

Target Audience: Fire Behavior Specialists including Fire Behavior Analysts, Long-term Analysts, Geo-spatial Analysts and fire behavior Technical Specialists

Summary:
As the fire behavior community aspires to promote best practices among a range of fire behavior experience, this webinar strives to share and record dialogue regarding lessons learned from fire behavior prediction on 2015 wildfire incidents. Every fire season there are parts of the country that receive a lot of fire activity. Fire-fighting resources are assigned and consequently numerous fire behavior specialists begin focusing on these areas to ensure fire-fighter safety and to develop short-, mid-, and long- term fire behavior simulations to support these efforts and management decisions. An incredible amount of knowledge is gained and shared during these short periods of intense focus; yet often these fire behavior practices and lessons learned are recorded, stored, and not shared beyond the incident.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Those of you attending the AFE conference in San Antonio TX, room location will be forthcoming.

WFM RD&A Work Highlighted in The Green Line

The Washington Office of Forest Service Fire and Aviation Management recently published a Special Edition of their Green Line newsletter and it highlighted some of the work we are doing here in the WFM RD&A. We would like to share these stories with you along with a copy of the Newsletter itself. Hats off to Tim, Andrew, and Ben for the great work on these projects!

You can view a copy of the full newsletter here

TwitterFire
For the past two fire seasons Wildland Fire Management RD&A (WFM RD&A) staff have been mining tweets about wildfires from Twitter's enormous pool of data with the goal of developing an early warning system for new and emerging wildfires. Utilizing the existing structure and concept of the Threat News Explorer, Ben Butler has been working with Kingbird Software to build a web app called TwitterFire to support this concept. Every 15 minutes TwitterFire relies on a custom built search algorithm to examine an average of 5,250,00 tweets and narrow the data set down to only those likely to be talking about a wildfire in the United States. The tweets are then mapped using Yahoo's Placemaker API and used to drive a notification system which sends emails and/or text messages to registered users when a threshold is met for a specific geographic location. The concept relies on the millions of Twitter users to spot wildfires and tweet about them- and so far it is working. The science of Social Media Data Mining is growing rapidly, and our ability to extract meaningful value from Social Media posts has improved greatly over the course of this project. The TwitterFire Web App from within the Threat News Explorer at - http://wwetac.us/tne/tne.html .

Structure Protection Assessment

WFM RD&A staff members Andrew Bailey, Ben Butler and Tim Sexton are utilizing data from R6 to assess effectiveness of fire suppression in preventing structure loss. Post-fire reviews were conducted by using Cadastral and Structure Address data entered in to the WFDSS values- at-risk component to compare number of structures threatened to known losses. Inter-governmental partnerships are yielding improvements jn data quality, which may assist managers in the future for ICS209 reporting, developing success stories for incidents, and evaluating decisions.

Distributing Information

Talk is cheap - or so they say!

Often we are overwhelmed with information and unsure about what to do. Other times we wish we had more information and then when we dive in and try to find it we struggle with it's accuracy and authority. Here at the WFM RD&A we spend a large amount of time trying to determine the best way to get timely, accurate, and helpful information our to our users and constituent groups. When we first started this blog the idea was that we would use it [heavily] to dynamically update our website with stories, project highlights, training notices and other helpful things. After taking a close look at our analytics (more on that in a future post and in our annual report) we realized that perhaps not as many people as we'd hoped were following our blog. Due to this fact we moved away from posting to the blog and tried other methods to reach out. 

What I would like to do with this post is try to determine a.) our current blog audience and b.) figure out if there are better ways we can get information out.

The Wildland Fire Management RD&A actually has a number of information outlets and I'd like to spend a few minutes outlining some of those before asking a favor of you...

WFM RD&A Websitewww.wfmrda.nwcg.gov
Most of you are likely familiar with our website. In fact you may have jumped into this blog from our website. This is currently our primary information outlet.

Application Websites
http://wfdss.usgs.gov and http://iftdss.sonomatech.com/
These websites are very specific and generally only contain information related to the applications they represent. You will likely notice that we sometimes host information on our wfmrda.nwcg.gov website about these applications. We tend to post more philosophical content about these specific applications on the WFM RD&A website.

Social Media
You may not realize it but the WFM RD&A Program has several social media accounts. If you haven't seen them you might want to check out:
YouTube Channels
- WFDSS Support Videos (YouTube Channel)
- IFTDSS Support Videos (YouTube Channel)
- WFM RD&A YouTube Channel

Twitter
- WFDSS Twitter Account

As you can see we put a fairly large amount of content out there. Especially when you consider the depth of some of these resources. Some are just getting started while others are very mature and include a number of links to additional resources and tools.

Is it enough?

What I am ultimately interested in knowing is how we can best get information out to you, our customers.

Please take a few minutes to jot down an idea (or two) using the comments feature below. Anything goes! If you'd like to see a newsletter; read more regular posts on this blog; perhaps you'd like to see us on Facebook or to use Twitter to it's full potential; maybe you prefer to get information via email and a Listserv would be best, whatever you have we're interested.

"Moving" to Blogger

We have been using Blogger to host our updates section of our website since 2013. Blogger makes a great platform for allowing multiple individuals to submit content and gives us the ability to post relevant news and notes without writing code. In short, it's a pretty slick way to manage a section of your website. Until now we have not leveraged the true power of Blogger and that is set to change.

Starting today when you clicked on this post you are taken to our blog's homepage on Blogger.com. The first thing you likely noticed is that the page looks much different from the WFM RD&A homepage. This is a small tradeoff and we hope you enjoy the layout of the blog. The advantage of using the Blogger homepage are many and I want to take some time and outline some of the key features...

"New" Functionality included with the move to Blogger:

• Comments - We see this as one of the main advantages to using the blogger homepage. We want to hear from you and hope that our subscribers will take the time to share their thoughts by submitting comments to our posts. By default the comment section is somewhat hidden but if you click on the "No comments" link at the bottom of each post you will jump into the actual post where you can leave a comment.
• Sharing - At the bottom of each post you will see icons (see image below) that allow you to share the post via social media and email. Please feel free to share!
  
• Subscribe via email - Using the "Follow by email" box in the left menu allows you to sign up for email notifications whenever a new blog post is ready to read
• Subscribe via RSS - If you use an RSS reader you can also subscribe and be notified of new posts. You'll find this option in the left menu also.
• Mobile friendly - Blogger automatically detects your device type and will display the best version of the site for your device. 
• Link back to WFM RD&A Homepage - We placed a permanent link in the left menu (Just click on our logo) to bring you back to the Wildland Fire Management RD&A homepage. If you find yourself wanting to be back on our website, it's just a click away!

We think this "move" to Blogger gives us greater flexibility and increases the functionality and accessibility and hope you feel the same. We plan on using the blog more and are working on new, exciting stories to post there. Thank you for taking the time to read through the changes we are making and for your interest in the work that we do. As with everything we do, our goal is to find the best way to help and we hope this is a step in the right direction.

~Ben 

Webinar - Advanced Fire Behavior Learning Unit

Advanced Fire Behavior Learning Unit

Webinar
“Sharing Fire Behavior Practices & Lessons Learned: Fire Season 2015”

Webinar Date and Time: 
Monday, November 16, 2015 

• PST (1100-1300) 
• MST (1200-1400) 
• CST (1300 to 1500) 
• EST (1400 to 1600).

Target Audience: Fire Behavior Specialists including Fire Behavior Analysts, Long-term Analysts, Geo- spatial Analysts and fire behavior Technical Specialists

Summary:
As the fire behavior community aspires to promote best practices amongst a range of fire behavior experience, this webinar strives to share and record dialogue regarding lessons learned from fire behavior prediction on 2015 wildfire incidents. Every fire season there are parts of the country that receive a lot of fire activity. Fire-fighting resources are assigned and consequently numerous fire behavior specialists begin focusing on these areas to ensure fire-fighter safety and to develop short-, mid-, and long- term fire behavior simulations to support these efforts and management decisions. An incredible amount of knowledge is gained and shared during these short periods of intense focus; yet often these fire behavior practices and lessons learned are recorded, stored, and not shared beyond the incident.

Some considerations worth exploring/sharing or discussing on the webinar include:

• What were some unique circumstances that influenced your fire behavior forecasts such as unusual fuels or weather events and how did that change your forecasts?
• What information would you want to share with future Fire Behavior Specialists who are working on an incident in the same location/same unit? 
• What modeling techniques are you using most often when assisting with strategic planning? 
• What worked as far as model calibration for the area you were working in? Common fuel model changes? Adjustment of dead and live fuel moistures?
• Was the default Growing Season Index a good baseline for fire behavior modeling?

Outcomes:
        1.) Information sharing and recording amongst the fire behavior specialists’ community. 
        2.) Summary of lessons learned for attendees

Webinar Presenters: 
Two case study presenters will provide a starting point for discussion and dialogue. If you’re interested in presenting or you have ideas that should be discussed, please share them here: https://docs.google.com/a/firenet.gov/forms/d/1pSEH-DhIABDO4VglrtFhy2buN0SbLhOr-tug7XgT3YU/viewform 

Webinar Organization: 
We encourage interested participants to attend the webinar locally in group settings to facilitate discussion amongst your own colleagues regarding the fire behavior topics. There will be a room available to participate live at the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE) San Antonio Conference. Folks attending the conference are welcome to attend. 

Please refer to this site for updated information including contacts: https://sites.google.com/a/firenet.gov/sharing-fire-behavior-practices-lessons-learned-fire-season-2015/ 

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WFDSS Spring Refreshers in the works

We want to use this space to let you know that we are hard at work creating the Spring Refresher/What you need to know about WFDSS documents for the 2015 Fire Season. As we have in the past, we will be publishing these documents on the WFDSS website (training page) under the Decision Learning Resources section. We will also highlight these documents on the WFM RD&A homepage and will be announcing their arrival to the WFDSS Geographic Area Editors.

Risk Assessment Video Series

A video series called, “Strategic-Level Risk Assessment for Fire Behavior Specialists” is available on the WFDSS YouTube Channel. There are seven videos that explain the role of the FBAN and LTAN in providing and communicating products to inform the risk decision. Topics include the Relative Risk Assessment, an Extended Risk Assessment, effects analysis, and the risk conclusion. A supplement is available HERE to use in combination with the videos or as a stand-alone guide.

You can access the Risk Assessment video series playlist from the URL below:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQOp517UPvtAeMCxmt00BfDzeVqwmDGIG

Improving WFDSS Incident Objectives and Requirements

Examination of wildland fire incident decisions revealed that most incident objectives are written general enough that they could apply to any fire in the country. This makes them of little use to incident management teams in developing strategies and tactics to achieve an agency administrator's intent for managing a specific fire and for agency administrators seeking to clarify the objectives they want accomplished. Similarly, strategic objectives and management requirements, established from forest plans, are the basis for incident objectives and incident requirements but are rarely written with wildland fire specificity. This decreases the likelihood that NEPA-based management direction is adequately implemented on a wildfire or as intended. It also increases the likelihood of additional risk to firefighters with marginal benefit. 

A systematic evaluation of wildfire incident decisions was undertaken during the 2014 fire season, to better understand the situation and recommend solutions. This included site visits to 23 fires and interviews of agency administrators, incident commanders and WFDSS authors. An analysis of all objectives in the WFDSS database as of May 2014 was also conducted. Findings from this work are summarized in the following briefing paper while more explanation and detail can be found in the Improving WFDSS Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements and Relaying Leader's Intent White Paper.

USDA FS Briefing Paper - Wildland Fire Decision Making Incident Objectives & Incident Requirements

White Paper - Improving WFDSS Incident Objectives & Incident Requirements and Relaying Leader's Intent