New! View webinar recording for status updates to the Wildfire Risk Assessments [LINK], originally recorded May 1, 2018.View publicly available assessment reports [LINK].View the interactive web app [LINK]The Wildland Fire Risk Assessment project was developed by
the National Park Service's Fire and
Aviation Management program as a response to the devastating 2011 wildfire
season. This project developed a consistent assessment method that
has been applied to NPS units nationwide regardless
of variations in climate, fuels, and topography.
The assessment, based on Firewise®
assessment forms, evaluates access, surrounding environment, construction
design and materials, and resources available to protect facilities from
wildland fire. Fuels treatment needs are evaluated using Firewise®
recommendations for creating defensible space. Tactical recommendations are
identified using a format similar to the Interagency Wildland Module Structure
Assessment form.
The data collected during the
assessment process can be used for:
Identifying, planning, prioritizing and tracking fuels
treatments at unit, regional and national levels, and
Developing
incident response plans for facilities and communities within NPS units.
The original spatial data for the
assessments comes from a variety
of sources including FMSS, WFDSS, NPMap Edits, manually digitized points using
Esri basemaps as a reference at various scales, and GPS collection using a multitude
of consumer and professional grade GPS devices. The facilities that have been
assessed and assigned a facility risk rating have been ground-truthed and field
verified. (In some rare occasions, facilities have been verified during remote
assessments. Those that have been remotely assessed are marked as such). The
resulting data is stored in a centralized geodatabase,
and this publicly available feature layer allows the user to view that data.
The NPS
Facilities feature layer includes the following layers and related tables:
Facility - A facility is defined by the
NPS as an asset that the NPS desires to track and manage as a distinct identifiable
entity. In the case of wildland fire risk assessments, a facility is most often
a structure but in special instances, a park unit may wish to identify and
assess other at risk features such as a historic wooden bridge or an
interpretive display. The facilities are assessed based on access, the
surrounding environment, construction design, and protection resources and
limitations, resulting in a numerical score and risk adjective rating for each
facility. These ratings designate the likelihood of ignition during a wildland
fire. The facilities are symbolized by their respective risk rating.Community - A community is a group of
five or more facilities, a majority of which are within 600 feet of each other,
that share common access and protection attributes. The community concept was
developed to facilitate data collection and entry in areas with multiple
facilities and where it made sense to apply treatments and tactics at a scale
larger than individual facilities. Most of the community polygons are created
using models in ArcMap, but some may have been created or edited in the field
using a Trimble GPS unit. The communities are assessed based on access to the
community, the surrounding environment, construction design of the majority of
facilities within the community, and protection resources and limitations. The
result of the assessment are two separate numerical scores: “Access and
Protection Score” and “Community Score”. The Access and Protection Score is
used to calculate each individual facility’s risk rating while the Community
Score is the overall numerical score and associated risk adjective for the
community as a whole. The communities are symbolized using a blue outline.Facility Tactics – The Facility Tactics
table provides recommended tactics that can be implemented to protect the
facility and/or community during a wildfire incident. These recommendations
include estimated man hours necessary to complete the given tactic. This table
is related to both the Facility and Community layers.Facility Treatment – The Facility
Treatment table provides recommended treatments that should be implemented in
order to create defensible space around the facility or community. The
treatment recommendations are broken up by zone (Zone 1 – 0 to 30 ft radius,
Zone 2 – 30 to 100 ft radius, and Zone 3 – 100 to 200 ft radius). The recommendations
include reoccurrence periods for the treatments as well as estimated man hours
necessary to complete the given treatments. This table is related to both the
Facility and Community layers.
*The NPS
Facilities layer is updated continually as new wildfire risk assessments are
conducted and the Wildland Fire Risk Assessment project progresses. The assessment
data contained here is the most current data available.
*More
information about the NPS Wildland Fire Risk Assessment Project, and the NPS
Facilities data itself, can be found at the New Wildland Fire Risk Assessments website.
This site provides information on the data collection process, additional ways
to access the data, and how to conduct assessments yourself (for both NPS and
non-NPS facilities).
