Managing Wildland Fire Risk in Florida
J. Brenner, D. Carlton, S. Mclellan, A. Dozier, T. Spencer, R. Jones and A. Ralowicz
Florida Division of Forestry (1,3)
Fire Program Solutions LLC (2)
Georgia Forestry Commission (4)
Texas Forest Service (5)
Sanborn Map Company Inc. (6)
MDA Federal Inc. (7)
Summary: We define wildfire risk as the probability of a wildfire occurring at a specified location and under given circumstances and its impacts on the affected objects e.g., homes, powerlines, plantations, etc (A. Bachmann et al 2001). Florida’s Wildland Fire Risk Assessment (FRA), completed in 2002, is a statewide effort to develop a comprehensive suite of standardized, spatial data layers needed to support implementation of a statewide fuels management strategy. By maintaining focus on fire/fuel dynamics and scientifically credible local-to-statewide applications, the FRA builds on a statewide surface fuels map, fire history data from many agencies, and weather data collected over a period of 20 years. Change detection is currently being utilized to update the statewide surface fuels layer. The process used in the FRA builds on a process first applied in the Lake Tahoe Basin Land Management Unit. Subsequent application with some modifications has recently been applied to thirteen Southern States (Southern Fire Risk Assessment).
Approach: FRA integrates several methodologies for predictive landscape modeling including remote sensing and fuels modeling into a comprehensive process for mapping vegetation, fire, and fuel characteristics. FRA methodologies are based on many years of successful scientific research and are grounded in the expertise of Mr. Don Carlton and his 30+ years of experience in the field of wildland fire behavior. FRA creates maps that characterize vegetation condition, potential fire behavior and effects. These maps may be used for prioritizing areas for fire prevention and fuels mitigation measures, as well as landscape rehabilitation and ecological restoration projects. They have also been used strategically to reduce wildfire costs, losses, and damages by assessing community risk from catastrophic wildfire.
On June 9th, 2004 the Commissioner of Agriculture for the State of Florida announced to the Florida press the completion of Florida’s Wildland Fire Risk Assessment. This announcement directed the public to two versions of the FRA application known as FRAS (Florida’s Wildland Fire Risk Assessment System). The first is a standalone application that requires additional software, e.g., ESRI’s ArcView 3.x, Flammap, and the Spatial Analyst Extension if one plans on making fire occurrence or fuel map changes and view the impacts resulting from fuels management or fire prevention efforts.
The second version of the application is the Web-FRAS. This application can be found on the Internet at the URL of: http://flame.fl-dof.com/risk/. The release of the Wildland Fire Risk Assessment on the Internet has made it available to anyone in Florida. In this way, individuals anywhere in the state can view the relative risk to their home/community by simply going on line and specifying what particular sets of data they want to see. The program presents that information immediately on request. The application is user friendly, and to date has received over twenty thousand requests for information. The two indices that can be displayed in both versions include the Wildland Fire Susceptibility Index (WFSI), which displays the potential for an area to burn, and the Level of Concern (LOC), which displays the potential impact or “risk” as defined in the Summary above.
We believe that we have managed to accomplish the original goals set out in the application for the Wildland Fire Risk Assessment. These goals included:
- Rapidly identify areas that may require additional tactical planning
- Allow agencies to work together to better define priorities and improve emergency response
- Develop refined analysis of complex landscape and fire situations using GIS
- Increase communication with local residents to address community priorities and needs
- Plan for resource needs
- Identify resource allocation based on potentially severe fire problems
Outcome: This presentation will touch on several of the conference themes including: risk management across spatial and temporal scales, status of immediate and long-term threats, remote sensing and geospatial technologies, risk characterization and communication, decision making under risk, risk mitigation and alternatives, and simulation modeling. It will show why this system is important for today’s wildland fire manager.
corresponding author:
Jim Brenner
Fire Management Administrator
Florida Division of Forestry
3125 Conner Blvd.
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1650
850-488-6480
brennej@doacs.state.fl.us
Encyclopedia ID: p110
