WHERE’S THE FIRE?The Development of an Interagency Fire History Geodatabase Standard

Cynthia WanschuraGIS Specialist, National Capital Region

NPS Fire Geospatial Systems Committee (FGSC) Member

2010 Resource Information Management Conference

FIRE GEOSPATIAL SYSTEMS COMMITTEE• Chartered by the Fire Management Leadership Board

(FMLB)• Includes a representative from each NPS region as well as

the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) and a park representative

• The purpose is to “provide strategic leadership for NPS Wildland Fire Management GIS Program and advise the FMLB, other agencies and external partners about GIS requirements, planning and other issues.”*

2nd Place Winner, 2007 NPS Fire Photo ContestHaleakala NP* FGSC Charter

THE NEED FOR GIS DATA MODELS

• Local users are asking for guidance• National users are in need of national datasets for

planning, analysis, reporting, and mapping

INTERAGENCY WILDLAND FIRE GEODATABASE DESIGN PROJECT

• Initiated by the U.S. Forest Service working in conjunction with available federal land management agencies and ESRI contracted for additional technical expertise

• Purpose to design geodatabase models based on existing interagency fire GIS standards adding to the standards as needed

THE LOFTY GOAL

To create datasets that would be used across governmental agencies that would be compatible enough to eventually combine them into interagency datasets, but with enough flexibility to meet individual agency requirements and data standards

2nd Place Winner, 2005 NPS Fire Photo Contest

TO THAT END

• Core fields with the option to add agency-specific fields

• Most domain, or picklist, values to be determined by each agency

• How the core componentslink to additional tables isdecided by the agency

Regeneration, NPS Fire Photo

GEODATABASES

• “A database or file structure used primarily to store, query, and manipulate spatial data.”*

• Components Include:– Feature Classes (shapefile

equivalents)– Tables– Rasters– Topologies– Network Datasets

* ESRI Virtual Campus Dictionary

THE DRAFT RESULT:BASIC INTERAGENCY VERSION

• PointOfOrigin: Point feature class containing points representing each fire, the point of ignition is preferred– This is where event-specific information is stored such

as Fire Name

• FireHistory: Polygon feature class containing the final mapped fire perimeter

THE DRAFT RESULT: NPS VERSION

• WFMI table added from an export from the Wildland Fire Management Information (WFMI) database

• Link table added to accomplish 1-to-Many relationship from the spatial data to the WFMI table

• Addition of NPS-specific fields added to the PointOfOrigin feature class

• Addition of NPS domain values to added and existing fields

FIRE HISTORY BALANCING ACT

• Incorporate historic records while establishing solid practices for the future and integrating with current records systems

• Avoid duplicate data entry both within the spatial dataset and in reference to reporting databases

PROJECT STATUS

• Project results have been presented to the National Wildland Coordinating Group’s (NWCG) Geospatial Task Group (GTG)

• NWCG GTG’s Data Administration Working Group (DAWG) has for review and comment and met Tuesday and Wednesday of this week (4/20/10-4/21/10)

• Draft model is in testing by members of the NPS Fire Geospatial Systems Committee

Regeneration, NPS Fire Photo

QUESTIONS?Cynthia Wanschura

GIS SpecialistNational Capital Region, NPScynthia_wanschura@nps.gov

Non-Winning Finalist 2005, NPS Fire Photo