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About WFDSS

Hide Section Background

Over the past 30 years, fires have dramatically increased in size and complexity, often stretching the capacity of the management systems in place. The Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) project evolved from the need to streamline and improve these decision-making processes, as well as take advantage of improvements in technology, fire modeling, and geospatial analysis.

The former system, Wildland Fire Situation Analysis (WFSA) has been around for 30 years with little change, has become cumbersome to use, and is not scalable or flexible enough for today’s fire management needs.

In June 2005, the National Fire and Aviation Executive Board chartered WFDSS to replace WFSA in 2009 with a system that has the following capabilities:

  • Develops a scaleable decision support system for agency administrators
  • Uses appropriate fire behavior modeling, economic principles, and information technology
  • Supports effective wildland fire decisions consistent with Resource and Fire Management Plans

WFDSS will also replace the Wildland Fire Implementation Plan (WFIP) and Long-Term Incident Planning (LTIP) processes.

WFDSS has the following advantages over the existing systems:

  • Enables spatial data layering
  • Reduces text, increases use of map displays
  • Reduces input requirements
  • Begins process at time of discovery
  • Removes alternative comparison and decision tree development
  • Pre-loads information from the following sources to allow pre-planning:
    • Land Management Plans/Fire Management Plans
    • Other sources
    • Preplanned decision criteria
    • Local spatial data files
  • Provides scalability for incident complexity (WFDSS contains three Response Levels: RL1, RL2, RL3, which equate to changing complexity)
  • Can be ended at any level, can progress through levels, or jump to appropriate level
  • Can be used for single or multiple fire situations.

Hide Section Timeline
Important WFDSS Dates
Date Event
June 2005

National Fire and Aviation Executive Board charters WFDSS Phase I
October 2006 Forest Services contracts with IBM to develop WFDSS system
April 2006
 Initial planning and requirements analysis completed
June 2007
 FSPro, RAVAR, and SCI WFDSS components available for testing on wildland fires
December 2007 FEC approves continued development of WFDSS for all five federal fire agencies
Winter/Spring 2008 Additional functionality and components added to system
June 2008 Second WFDSS prototype during fire season to test as replacement for WFSA, WFIP and LTIP
February 2009 WFDSS application replaces WFSA

 

Hide Section User Roles

The following sections explain what each user type is allowed to do in WFDSS. To request a change to your user role globally, contact the administrator. To change your user role for a specific incident, contact the author of the incident, or the geographic area editor.

Viewer:

  • Is the minimum level of access for all WFDSS users.
  • View incident information for all WFDSS incidents and groups.
  • Cannot edit.

Dispatcher:

  • Enter information for a new WFDSS incident.
  • Edit incident information for incidents they create.
  • Run simple (unsupervised) fire behavior analyses.

Author:

  • Enter information for a new WFDSS incident.
  • Edit incident information for incidents they create.
  • Grant privileges to other users for incidents they have authored.
  • Run simple (unsupervised) fire behavior analyses.
  • Request an analyst be assigned for fire behavior modeling and RAVAR analysis.
  • Create a group or complex from individual incidents.

Geographic Area Editor:

  • Edit WFDSS incidents within their geographic area (GACC).
  • Request and cancel analyses for WFDSS incidents in their GACC.
  • Prioritize analysis requests within their GACC.
  • Authorize new Viewer, Author, Dispatcher, and Fire Behavior Specialist roles in their GACC.
  • Does not have privileges specific to Fire Behavior Analysts, RAVAR Analysts, or Administrators.

National Editor:

  • Has maximum authority relative to WFDSS incident management.
  • Has all the capabilities of a Regional Editor, but at a national level.
  • Delete incidents.
  • Does not have privileges specific to Fire Model Analysts, RAVAR Analysts, or Administrators.

Fire Behavior Specialist:

Formerly the FSPro Analyst role, but the name change reflects additional fire behavior tools available in WFDSS. Users requesting this role should have previous fire behavior modeling experience, including evaluating and modifying landscape files, historic climate, and forecasted weather.

  • Conduct “supervised” fire behavior analyses and modify inputs as needed.
  • Accept (or reject) the results of the fire behavior analyses.
  • Grant privileges to other analysts for analyses they have created.
  • Interpret fire behavior analyses for other users.

RAVAR Analyst:

Since the RAVAR analysis tool is not yet completely automated, some manual effort is required to complete a RAVAR analysis. This manual effort is provided by the RAVAR Analysts at the Forestry Science Lab in Missoula, so users should not request this role.

  • Accept or reject a RAVAR analysis request.
  • Post RAVAR summary documentation.

Super Analyst:

  • Has maximum analysis authority, provides coaching and training to other analysts.
  • Run, edit, and accept all types of analyses.
  • Delete analyses.
Hide Section WFDSS Data

WFDSS is primarily geospatial, and uses pre-loaded shapefiles and data layers to provide information to the user. You do not need to be a GIS specialist or fire behavior analyst to use the system, though a basic understanding of each will help you in interpreting your results.

The data come from several sources:

LANDFIRE:

According to the LANDFIRE website, it is “a five-year, multi-partner project producing consistent and comprehensive maps and data describing vegetation, wildland fuel, and fire regimes across the United States. It is a shared project between the wildland fire management programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and U.S. Department of the Interior. The project has four components: the LANDFIRE Prototype, LANDFIRE Rapid Assessment, LANDFIRE National, and Training/Technology Transfer.” (http://www.landfire.gov/)

Local Area Data:

Some units have uploaded their own geospatial data and use that for incident management.

Weather Data:

WFDSS uses the RAWS weather stations for the historic weather data input for the fire behavior analyses. These RAWS stations provide information on local temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind speed, and direction. (http://www.fs.fed.us/raws/).

Google Earth Data:

If you have Google Earth® installed on your computer, you can use the Google Earth views to evaluate the topography and see assets at risk. Note that Google Earth views represent the point in time when the photograph was taken, and may not include all current assets.

Some WFDSS analyses have the results available as Google Earth KMLs, which are available for downloading and viewing in Google Earth. Note, however, that Google Earth is not real-time, so some assets may have been created since the satellite image was taken. (http://earth.google.com/)