Suppression

Maintaining situational awareness is critical to effective response operations. An integrated, real-time, location-based solution makes it easy for incident commanders to monitor changing conditions as they happen, brief operations staff and the public immediately in real time, and make better-informed decisions that can save lives and property. Location intelligence provides the powerful mapping and analytics capabilities that allow fire personnel to see what and where things are happening at the moment they occur.

Drone, aircraft, and satellite deployed sensors provide views of our planet from every possible vantage point, creating massive volumes of near real-time information about conditions on the ground. Imagery can see through smoke, identify hot spots on the ground, provide situational awareness, and help communicate impacts after a fire passes. GIS allows analysts to interpret and exploit imagery to determine areas of change or damage and create dynamic desktop, web, and mobile applications to see and share where you need to act. Artificial intelligence (AI) functionality allows GIS specialists to easily create digital map layers, like road networks, building footprints, and land cover, while also classifying and labeling features like damaged buildings or roads blocked by debris.

Residents need access to information before, during, and after an incident to assess their personal risk and determine when to act. But information without context is hard to understand. Esri puts critical information in the context of location—where roads are closed, where evacuation zones are located, and where to shelter or meet up when needed. GIS supports an agency's public information program with visual data. Communicate to the public with an authoritative voice using powerful, detailed, digital maps designed to scale when the public and media need them most.

Following a wildfire, it's important for firefighters, local government leaders, utility company staff, and others to assess the damage caused when the fire moved across the landscape. Assessment teams use mobile GIS to collect essential data such as destroyed structures and impacts to habitat, vegetation, and slope. This data can be mapped, inventoried, and communicated to command personnel using maps and dashboards that read this information in real time. The ability to collect field data, which may be coming from a variety of teams in disparate locations, and integrate it into a central location can expedite rehabilitation planning.