Shelbie Harris
News Editor
You may believe fighting wildfires is as simple as dousing the flames with water, but nowadays a plethora of tools and technologies are available to aid wildfire managers throughout the fiery trenches.
Wildfire managers fighting the 279,144 acre “Soda Fire” utilized one such technology known officially as the Rehabilitation Capability Convergence for Ecosystem Recovery (RECOVER) project which was developed by Idaho State University and NASA.
“The RECOVER project gathers [Geographical Information System] (GIS) information and has it ready in case there’s a wildfire,” said Ryan Howerton, a master’s student in the GIS program and geospatial club president.
“Then once requested by particular agencies, we create web maps for fire managers to firstly plan recovery of the land after the fire, but secondly the system has evolved into something they’re using during the fire as well.”
Fueled by 40 mph winds the fire lasted 10 days from Aug. 15 until being declared one-hundred percent controlled on Aug. 25.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) initially requested the RECOVER web map from the ISU GIS Center when it was 78,000 acres in size and the center provided multiple updates as the fire grew.
Thanks to the RECOVER project, natural resource mangers were able to begin the necessary early rapid assessment for rehabilitating the fire well before its containment.
“The RECOVER project allows natural resource mangers easy access to data while firefighters are still battling the fire,” said Karen Miranda, public information officer for the Soda Fire Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation team.
When a fire the magnitude of the Soda Fire occurs, a formal report is required detailing how the area should be rehabilitated.
This report is to be filed within 14 days of the fire being fully contained
Such information could be obtained without the assistance provided by the RECOVER project said Miranda but could take managers multiple days to sift through web maps, data, and other reports.
Essentially the RECOVER project is a computerized decision support system in the form of multi-layered GIS maps that is automatically deployable and site-specific.
“Information is built into the maps. For example, the fire boundary, which shows the shape of the fire, and within that boundary it also contains information about the fire date, the acreage and the fire identification number,” said Howerton.
Firefighters are able to update information related to the fire in real-time by utilizing a remote application installed on their smartphones.
This information is then automatically stored on the GIS Center’s server and can be accessed using a direct URL.
Howerton said rather than saving the new data on top of old information, each time an updated boundary line or other important piece of information is recorded it is saved differently to refrain from confusing fire managers and other officials.
The RECOVER project is a state-of-the-art cloud-based technology able to provide site-specific flexibility for each fire.
Although initially designed to be used in partnership with the BLM and the Idaho Department of Lands for wildfires located solely in Idaho, the RECOVER project did receive a request for a fire located in California.
“We have a map of the whole western United States that contains information on what the ecosystem was before a fire,” said Howerton. “We had no issues with the web map of California but with the recent Soda Fire entering the Oregon border there were some part of the web maps that were unresponsive because of missing data sets.”
This process aids in restoring the natural vegetation to what it was prior to the wildfire.
Currently the RECOVER project is in its second phase of development after initially being tested in Idaho during the 2013 fire season with funding from NASA’s Applied Sciences Program.
The program was expanded for three more years with additional funding and its creators and emergency managers now have a better understanding for the many uses of RECOVER which may, in the future, extend to earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes and other natural disasters.
For more information on the RECOVER project, visit http://giscenter.isu.edu/research/Techpg/nasa_RECOVER/index.htm.
More information on the NASA Applied Sciences Program is available at http://appliedsciences.nasa.gov.
