The NCLFA’s Fire Intelligence Module (FIM) installs remote monitoring devices such as network-enabled surveillance cameras, weather stations and long-distance data and communication networks on active wildfires to give fire managers real-time access to fire information. Since 2004, the FIM has been deployed nearly a dozen times to provide fire surveillance and network connections to numerous fires. These fire complexes have crossed jurisdictional boundaries, presented a variety of terrain challenges, and have had varying surveillance and network needs. Operational assignments of the FIM include:
Freezeout Fire — Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest
Selway-Salmon WFU Complex — Bitterroot National Forest
Horseshoe WFU — Lassen Volcanic National Park
Middle Fork Complex — Salmon-Challis National Forest,
Tolo and Domke Lake Complex — North Cascades National Park and Wenatchee National Forest
Conger Fire — Lolo National Forest
Langille Fire — Gifford Pinchot National Forest
The FIM is made up of scientists and technicians with extensive fire experience, fire qualifications, and active red cards. Past successes of the FIM include: development of cost-effective remote monitoring strategies for inaccessible fires via wireless-enabled video, operational infrared aerial mapping support, ad hoc field computer systems administration, development of data management strategies linking field personnel with ICP, GIST course development, work-force training in field-enabled GIS, GPS and related technologies, and public information and educational activities.
This graphic shows a typical setup to send images and data back to base camp
For the Tolo and Domke Complex in 2007, the FIM created a public education web site featuring time-lapse movies and images from the camera network that the FIM installed on the fires.
In 2008 the NCLFA worked with the Lolo National Forest-Seeley Lake District to install a remote monitoring system on one of the forest’s lookout towers on Morrell Mountain. The camera and weather monitoring station stream real-time images and data back to the district ranger’s office in Seeley Lake. By installing this semi-permanent, experimental network, the NCLFA now has a working communications connection in place pre-wildland fire. When wildland fires do occur again in this part of the Lolo National Forest, a network link to a remote, hard-to-access fire will be easier to establish and fire managers will be able to easily transmit and receive data and images from the fire.
The NCLFA also set up a camera and data network on Big Sky Mountain, on the edge of Snowbowl ski area near Missoula. During the 2009 fire season, the FIM set up a link from Big Sky Mountain to a location on the Powell Ranger District. This establishes a network link – from Morrell Mountain to Big Sky Mountain to NCLFA offices at the University of Montana and from Powell Ranger District to Big Sky Mountain to NCLFA offices – that allows NCLFA’s computer servers to power a more reliable and secure network. The NCLFA’s researchers will be able to utilize this network to answer other research questions about communications networks, digital communication over such networks, and other uses of remote sensing technology for fire management.
More about the FIM's work:
