Reinforcing wildfire predictive services with timely weather information

摘要

To improve wildfire responses by making and implementing safe, effective and efficient management decision, predictive services has been created to better preparing and responding to wildfires. Recently, efforts had been made to strengthen the capabilities on collecting and integrating timely weather information for improving the predictive services products. Previously, the weather information source for generating fire danger risk adjective by the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) model were from Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) observation network. Recently, a cost-effective method has been proposed by integrating the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) timely observation into the weather information data source, GIS programs have been developed by feeding the National Fire Danger Rating System through the Weather Information Management System (WIMS) alternative gateway automatically with the ASOS weather stations. As a result, the map accuracy has been improved for the predictive service map products. Adopting the advanced technology from geographic information systems and information technologies, daily updated fire dangers maps for predictive services has been greatly enhanced thus better positioned wildfire managers and firefighters towards wildfires risks.