Data Sharing Leads to Powerful Tools for Fighting Fire

The WFM RD&A focuses on providing information that improves decision-making on fires.  Few things are as powerful as the combination of information on where a fire is likely to go (fire behavior modeling) and what things that the fire is likely to impact (values at risk).  The WFM RD&A gathers information on values at risk from a variety of sources. Among the most important are local government datasets depicting building locations, which are often built from addressing and tax parcel, or "cadastral", data.  Recently, Emergency  Management magazine published an article about the cadastral data partnership in which the WFM RD&A is engaged. This partnership engages federal partners from within the wildland fire research and operations communities, non-fire federal agencies with aligned goals, and state and local government entities to build datasets that improve decision-making and contribute to public and firefighter safety.  The article was authored by WFM RD&A employees Andrew Bailey, Data Manager, and Benjamin Butler, GIS Specialist.

Read it at http://www.emergencymgmt.com/disaster/Data-Sharing-Tools-Fighting-Fire.html