Pyrocast: Wildfire Forecasting & Data Services

This work will develop a real-time wildfire forecast system that automatically detects and forecasts the spread of every fire in the Continental US and updates each forecast in real-time as additional information becomes available. Fire forecast data, which are generated “in the cloud” using high performance computing resources, are transferred to a web server hosting a mobile-friendly web map that facilitates visualization by stakeholders such as first responders and government entities. Subscribers will also be able to initiate a fire spread forecast by clicking a location on the web map and specifying an ignition time; the resultant forecast will then also be visible to others, enabling coordination among first responders and other agencies. This system also quantifies near-term fire risk by modeling ignition and spread of millions of hypothetical fires at various times in the future. This provides a means to quantify spatially and temporally granular near term fire risk in terms of fire size and number of structures impacted to inform decisions regarding resource allocation and fire prevention.