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Track: Forestry
James Brenner
State of Florida
3125 Connor Building
Bureau of Fire Protection
Tallahassee, FL 32399-1650
Telephone: 904-488-6111
Fax: 904-448-4445
E-mail: brennej@doacs.state.fl.us
Loukas Arvanitis, Daniel Brackett, Bryan Lee, Richard Carr, Rod Suddaby
Integrating GIS, Meso-Scale Fire Weather Prediction, Smoke Plume Dispersion Modeling, and the Internet for Enhanced Open Burning Authorizations and Wildfire Response in Florida
Defining Issue: Minimizing smoke intrusions into smoke sensitive areas is one of the goals of the Florida Division of Forestry's Open Burning Permit System. The Florida DOF is also charged with responding to wildfires throughout the state. With a rapidly growing population and a corresponding increase in urban and suburban areas, this task is becoming considerably more complex. GIS Solution: The Florida Division of Forestry, with help from its cooperators at the University of Florida, Florida State University, and the Canadian Forest Service, is developing a client/server based open burning authorization and wildfire response system, which integrates meso-scale fire weather modeling with advanced GIS analysis and large-scale DBMS to provide enhanced decision support for duty officers responsible for issuing open burning authorizations and responding to reports of wildfires. Methodology: The Florida Enhanced Open Burning Authorization System (EOBAS) allows duty officers to use GIS data
with current weather forecast information to predict if the smoke plume resulting from a proposed open burn is likely to enter any known smoke-sensitive areas. The Computer-Aided Dispatching System (CADS) is integrated into the EOBAS providing duty officers with up-to-date information to allow them to effectively mobilize appropriate fire suppression resources in the event of a wildfire. The Florida Fire Weather Information System provides users around the State with current fire weather forecasts and incises via the World Wide Web (WWW). Software: The burning authorization, wildfire report, and weather forecast data are stored on an Oracle database server in Tallahassee. The EOBAS and CADS client applications were developed using Visual Basic with MapObjects and Oracle objects and are designed to be operated at each DOF district in the state, connecting to the Oracle Server via T1 network connections. Weather forecasts are generated by the Meso-Scale Model Version 5 (MM5), run twice a day in
Tallahassee. Fire weather forecasts and fire danger rating index maps are created using data from the MM5 and ArcInfo. The purpose of the paper is to highlight the various components of this project as well as to discuss some of the technical challenges encountered during the development and integration phases.
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