Montana Wildland Fire Base Map

View the application http://firecenter.cfc.umt.edu/FCBaseMap/ 

Project details
On a typical wildland fire, the GIS Specialist spends several days acquiring data and re-formatting maps of the area in order to generate the appropriate fire maps. The Montana Wildland Fire Base Map project, developed by the National Center for Landscape Fire Analysis (NCLFA), allows the GIS Specialist to generate a base map in minutes, freeing them to focus on the creation, display, and analysis of incident data.

The NCLFA's Base Map takes care of the data mining, data generalization and representation, graphic refinement, and map compilation. The GIS Specialist can use a geodatabase populated with GIS data for the defined area of interest, a map template, and layer files that are already generalized, symbolized, and labeled to replicate a standard topographic base map. These layers are used in the production of cartographic products such as vicinity, briefing, and Incident Action Plan (IAP) maps, and to provide context for GIS workflows such as perimeter interpretation and editing. The data and maps downloaded through the Base Map are standardized for fire management GIS functions such as cartographic operations, attribute and spatial queries, attribute classification, generation of reports and graphics, map printing, and data export.

Base Map Data Include:
Transportation: Highways, Ramps, Primary, Secondary, and Forest Roads
Administrative: Cities, County Boundaries, Montana Boundary
Stewardship: Jurisdictional Boundaries, Special Management Areas, Wilderness
Hydrography: Point Sources, Flowlines, Water Bodies
Hypsography: Contour Lines, DEM, Hillshade
Reference: Quad Index, PLSS

The sources for this base data include Montana and national framework datasets; and demonstrates the utility of framework datasets in Montana. The state leads the nation in creating and maintaining comprehensive, centralized datasets; the Montana Wildland Fire Base Map is currently one of only a few applications demonstrating the use of these datasets. With this centralized data, data updates and changes are immediately made, so the data is always accurate and current.

Users with ESRI v9.0 or later and an internet connection can view the Montana Wildland Fire Base Map through an interactive web-based map viewer. Users can visually identify their area of interest and extract the data and map products for the given extent with the click of a button. Visit http://firecenter.cfc.umt.edu/FCBaseMap/ to get started.

Project development
The NCLFA's GIS team developed the Montana Wildland Fire Base Map after working as GIS technicians on wildland fire assignments and realizing that fire base maps were time-consuming to create. NCLFA partnered with the Montana State Library Natural Resource Information System to acquire Montana datasets, then standardized and formatted all of that data and developed a web-based mapping application through which the data and associated products can be queried and downloaded. After user testing by wildland fire GIS experts, NCLFA refined the database and mapping application to provide more detail and functionality to the online map.

The NCLFA is currently partnering with USGS Geographic Names Information System to do a prototype update of the GNIS and Base Map (GNIS is the Federal standard for geographic nomenclature and contains information about physical and cultural geographic features of all types in the United States). This pilot project will help streamline the GNIS data for Montana, and will be a component of the Montana Wildland Fire Base Map. Once GNIS naming is incorporated into Base Map, users will be able to do text-based searching.

Project application
The Montana Wildland Fire Base Map was successfully demonstrated and tested at a multi-agency, public-private disaster management simulation in September, 2006. Fire, law enforcement, health and human resources, public works, and state government officials from the Capitol complex in Helena responded to a mock earthquake along the Canyon Ferry fault. The Base Map was used to quickly produce base maps necessary for field reconnaissance, damage assessment, planning, and logistic support (within two hours of response). Additionally, the simulation was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Base Map for supporting the incident command structure in real-time and in temporary emergency facilities.

The Base Map application is now available to the fire community for use during the 2008 fire season.

Application: http://firecenter.cfc.umt.edu/FCBaseMap/
Principal Investigator: Lee Macholz
Project Staff:  Craig Comstock, LiMei Piao
Project Partners: Mike Sweet, UM College of Forestry and Conservation
Montana State Library's Natural Resource Information System (NRIS)

Base Map Workshop PowerPoint presentation (pdf)