The Challenge
Wildfires are becoming more prevalent and devastating across the United States. Pre-planning can improve resource allocation and communications when wildfire risk is high. Forecasters rely on a variety of fire weather metrics to forecast wildfire risk, but current capabilities limit these forecasts to only 14 days. There is limited work on how to best utilize new forecast tools that could expand the forecast period to several weeks or more.
Our Solution
Our work merged datasets from several common forecast models, standardizing the data to the same format and validating the data against observations. Various statistical tests and computational methods were applied to the data to experiment with ways it can be leveraged for improved forecasts. Our team worked with collaborators from the University of Miami and the US Forest Service for a multidisciplinary approach.
Prime
Results +What makes this unique
We successfully created and standardized a new 30-terabyte fire weather research database (sFWRD), which is now hosted at the Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center (WIRC). This work has resulted in numerous scientific presentations at national conferences, and six scientific papers have been submitted for peer-reviewed publications. Operational forecasters are encouraged by how these results are advancing their capabilities.
Project Experts
