{"id":375011,"date":"2020-10-20T07:26:47","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T14:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=375011"},"modified":"2022-03-29T14:35:04","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T21:35:04","slug":"firemappers-track-quickly-spreading-wildfires","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/firemappers-track-quickly-spreading-wildfires","title":{"rendered":"#FireMappers Volunteers Keep Tabs on Quickly Spreading Wildfires"},"author":5352,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[211],"tags":[1431,282552,160632,471971],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478422],"esri_blog_department":[478242],"class_list":["post-375011","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-safety","tag-crowdsourcing","tag-evacuation","tag-maps","tag-wildfire","esri-blog-category-wildfire","esri_blog_department-public-safety"],"acf":{"video_source":"","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"#FireMappers volunteers fill in data gaps about new fires and changing fire perimeters.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"#FireMappers volunteers fill in data gaps about new fires and changing fire perimeters, connecting fire locations on a map to authoritative resources on who should evacuate and how.\r\n\r\nKey Takeaways\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>#FireMappers quickly became a source for up-to-date information about spreading fires.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>GIS professionals contribute to verify reports, map fire extents, and connect data to added resources.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>While #FireMappers succeeds in communicating changing conditions, volunteers hope for better sharing by authorities.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"As he watched wildfires rage across California, Paul Doherty had an idea. It was 2015, and Doherty was living in Redlands, 60 miles east of Los Angeles. He noted heightened levels of anxiety and alertness among people across the region.\r\n\r\nThe problem, Doherty thought, was how to take advantage of that alertness, especially in the early stages of a fire. The Los Angeles metro area encompasses five counties and hundreds of independent cities. Could people turn to city government sources, county officials, sheriff\u2019s departments, or federal agencies for the wildfire information they need? Each has its own data and social media sources. Moreover, fires often travel across jurisdictions.\r\n\r\n\u201cIf you didn\u2019t already know that a fire was occurring within the Riverside city limits, you didn\u2019t know to look for information from the city of Riverside,\u201d Doherty said. Evacuation information, often given only in text form rather than as a map, made it hard for the public to understand and act."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":375051,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Doherty was proficient with geographic information system (GIS) software used to create digital maps with place-specific data. GIS-based fire maps already existed, but they were mainly used by firefighters to track a fire\u2019s progress, and only updated once a day. Every night, pilots flew over the area, gathering infrared data that was then processed by a GIS program to create the maps. The next night, they did it again.\r\n\r\nUsing his own personal use ArcGIS Online account, Doherty began a project called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.arcgis.com\/apps\/webappviewer\/index.html?id=6dc469279760492d802c7ba6db45ff0e\">#FireMappers<\/a>. \u201cI just started dropping points on a map where I knew there was a fire,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I knew because a reporter was there or it was described on the radio or through social media\u2014whatever I could figure out. I did it mostly for fires near Redlands, and mostly for friends, so they\u2019d know what was happening.\u201d\r\n\r\nDelineating the exact boundaries of fires in progress wasn\u2019t the point of #FireMappers. The goal was to give people a way to visualize their location in relation to the danger\u2014and provide links to websites and social media accounts of responding agencies for more information.\r\n\r\nEven after Doherty moved to Canada and then New Zealand, he kept the project going, monitoring internet feeds of Southern California police and fire scanners. #FireMappers developed a steady following.\r\n<h3><strong>A New Kind of Fire Map<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nDoherty noticed that traffic to the online maps would increase when a fire encroached on a densely populated area, or when a fire seemed particularly complex and unpredictable. In October 2019, Angelenos experienced both simultaneously when the Getty Fire erupted near the I-405 freeway and burned through the hills of the Brentwood neighborhood. The presence of Santa Ana winds\u2014dry blasts that blow down from the mountains, a fixture of autumn in Southern California\u2014increased the fire\u2019s volatility."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":375061,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"Traffic on #FireMappers surged, from around a thousand visits a day to a million. \u201cI was thinking, uh-oh, this is more success than I was looking for,\u201d Doherty said.\r\n\r\nDoherty realized he could no longer treat #FireMappers as an experiment. By then, he was again living in Redlands, working as the director of technology innovation for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.napsgfoundation.org\">National Alliance for Public Safety GIS<\/a> (NAPSG) Foundation. NAPSG agreed to bring #FireMappers under its umbrella, but the project would still need outside assistance.\r\n<h3><strong>The Project Expands<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nDoherty reached out to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=giscorps&amp;oq=giscorps&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j0l4j69i60.2658j0j4&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8\">GISCorps<\/a>, a volunteer offshoot of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA), to tap the skills of advanced GIS users who design <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/giscorps-builds-covid-19-testing-sites-map\/\">mapping projects<\/a> for humanitarian or disaster-relief purposes. GISCorps quickly assembled a team of 30 #FireMappers volunteers, divided into a few geographic regions. Each regional group established a Slack channel to discuss information on emerging fires.\r\n\r\nThe addition of GISCorps allowed #FireMappers to expand its purview into Northern California and the Pacific Northwest, just in time for the latter region to experience a brutal wildfire season this year.\r\n\r\n\u201cWe had a huge wind event and very dry weather, and so the sparks just took off,\u201d said German Whitley, an Oregon resident and GISCorps\u2019s project lead for #FireMappers.\r\n\r\nThe fire communication infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest was shakier than in California, where years of wildfires had instilled a homegrown situational awareness. \u201cA lot of the fires here were in small and not very wealthy counties, where they watched their canyons burn,\u201d Whitley explained. \u201cIn Oregon and Washington, there\u2019s such a mosaic of jurisdictions\u2014tribal lands, US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management areas, state forests, and county sheriffs\u2014and early in an incident there is very little sharing of information among agencies.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":375081,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":"https:\/\/napsg.maps.arcgis.com\/apps\/webappviewer\/index.html?id=6dc469279760492d802c7ba6db45ff0e&extent=-11890905.284%2C4998946.2811%2C-11790008.4067%2C5062083.2664%2C102100"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3><strong>Tracking the Information Flow<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nWhile #FireMappers is a mapping project, it\u2019s also a workflow experiment\u2014an attempt to deal with large amounts of disparate information. In this sense, it mirrors recent developments in GIS, to optimize and organize geographically specific, near real-time data for clear communication.\r\n\r\nTo help with that aspect of #FireMappers, Doherty approached Crowd Emergency Disaster Response (<a href=\"https:\/\/cedrdigitalcorps.org\/\">CEDR<\/a>) Digital Corps, a group that uses emerging technologies and social media to gather data and drive messaging around disaster response. \u201cIf you\u2019re the social media person for a small town, no matter how good you are, you\u2019re probably not going to build the town\u2019s Twitter account into a significant following,\u201d said Rob Neppell, CEDR\u2019s director of technology innovation. \u201cWhat CEDR can do is amplify that message.\u201d\r\n\r\nCEDR helps guide the flurry of reports reaching the #FireMappers\u2019 Slack channels. Through a combination of curated lists, keyword monitoring, and automated searches, CEDR\u2019s guidance ensures that GISCorps\u2019 volunteers are getting the information they need, as soon as it becomes available.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere\u2019s the geographic space of fires\u2014where they are,\u201d Doherty said. \u201cAnd then there\u2019s this weird digital space\u2014where\u2019s the info? Without CEDR, we\u2019d be good at mapping [fires], but not so good at mapping that digital space.\u201d\r\n<h3><strong>Dreaming of a World without #FireMappers<\/strong><\/h3>\r\nAlthough the collaboration of the three organizations has put #FireMappers on solid footing, the principals hope it serves as a model for governments to follow.\r\n\r\n\u201cAs proud as we are of our automations and the GISCorps volunteers, for most fires that come in we\u2019re hearing about it second-hand from official agency sources,\u201d Neppell said. \u201cSomeone listening to a scanner will hear it and tweet about it. We detect it and get it on the map. But it would be much better if there were a feed right from the agency.\u201d\r\n\r\nDoherty echoed Neppell\u2019s sentiment, noting the need for a government-led effort:\r\n\r\n\u201cIn the long term, it would be nice to short-circuit this and have a public map that isn\u2019t maintained by a bunch of crazy enthusiasts. There were more fire-related public information maps from local governments and incident management teams than ever before, so there's an indication that <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%23FireMappers&amp;src=typed_query&amp;f=live\">#FireMappers<\/a> has served this purpose. Ideally, we\u2019ll work ourselves out of a job.\u201d\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\nAccess <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/disaster-response\/disasters\/wildfires\">wildfire data, live feeds, technology, and resources.<\/a>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"<h2><strong>Anatomy of a #FireMappers Response<\/strong><\/h2>\r\n#FireMappers functions via the <a href=\"https:\/\/storymaps.arcgis.com\/stories\/96feefc96fbd4f5580f70ee21892173b\">smooth coordination<\/a> of NAPSG, GISCorps, and CEDR Digital Corps. But it also relies on amateurs worldwide who monitor sites like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.broadcastify.com\/\">Broadcastify<\/a>, which provides police and fire scanner transmissions, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flightradar24.com\/40.66,-73.98\/8\">Flightradar24<\/a>, which lets fire trackers note when airborne firefighters are dispatched.\r\n\r\nThe conflagration that would soon be called the Bobcat Fire began in the vicinity of the Angeles National Forest, sometime in the late morning or early afternoon of September 6, 2020. By 12:20 pm Pacific daylight time, it had been entered into the Integrated Reporting of Wildland-Fire Information (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forestsandrangelands.gov\/WFIT\/applications\/IRWIN\/index.shtml\">IRWIN<\/a>) database, managed by a consortium of federal agencies.\r\n\r\nAt 12:40 p.m., the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CAFireScanner?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor\">@CAFireScanner<\/a> Twitter account, maintained by a tracker in New Zealand, took notice and tweeted: \u201cNew start in Angeles NF near Cogswell Reservoir being called the #BobCatFire.\u201d The tracker noted that no units were yet on the scene, and visibility had been reported from three miles away. To visually confirm the fire, the tracker located it on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alertwildfire.org\/orangecoca\/index.html?v=81e002f\">ALERTWildfire<\/a> network of public cameras.\r\n\r\nA minute later, Chrissy Livergood, the GISCorps volunteer on duty for Southern California, saw the Tweet pop up on #FireMappers\u2019 Slack channel notification system. \u201cI\u2019ve got this one,\u201d she wrote, opening a GIS survey form to enter the relevant information.\r\n\r\nThere was no exact location given by IRWIN or any other official source, so she chose the reservoir as an initial map point for the fire. NAPSG\u2019s Paul Doherty, following along on Slack, confirmed that no further information was available through Flightradar24. After Doherty confirmed that the fire was within the Angeles National Forest, Livergood moved the location to the northeast.\r\n\r\nBy 12:50 p.m., the fire was on the #FireMappers map with what Doherty and Livergood determined was the best initial source for evacuation information, the <a href=\"https:\/\/ready.lacounty.gov\/alerts\/\">Alert LA County<\/a> website, managed by the county sheriff\u2019s office. Four minutes later, GISCorps volunteer Dawn Hutchinson tweeted a link to #FireMappers with relevant info on the Bobcat Fire. CEDR then boosted the message by retweeting it.\r\n\r\nBecause the fire began in the forest, far from populated areas, the first evacuation orders were not released until the following day. Doherty and Livergood then updated the map to direct people to information provided by <a href=\"https:\/\/lacounty.gov\/emergency\/\">Los Angeles County<\/a> and the interagency database <a href=\"https:\/\/inciweb.nwcg.gov\/incident\/7152\">InciWeb<\/a>. As the Bobcat Fire continued to burn over the next several weeks, CEDR tweeted more than a hundred updates.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Bobcat Fire highlights how our organizations each have their own focus and mission, which complement one another in the #FireMappers project,\u201d said Rob Neppell, CEDR\u2019s director of technology innovation. \u201cThe map itself provides the basic information on a fire, with an emphasis on getting it mapped quickly and accurately with pointers to official information sources. Then CEDR monitors those sources on an ongoing basis, to amplify the messaging around evacuation orders and other important updates.\u201d","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>#FireMappers Volunteers Keep Tabs on Quickly Spreading Wildfires<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the absence of a clearinghouse for fire alerts, volunteers verify and map reports to keep vulnerable populations informed.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/firemappers-track-quickly-spreading-wildfires\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"#FireMappers Volunteers Keep 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