Guidance on spatial wildland fire analysis

There is an increasing need for spatial wildland fire analysis in support of incident management, fuel treatment planning, wildland-urban assessment, and land management plan development. However, little guidance has been provided to the field in the form of training, support, or research examples. This paper provides guidance to fire managers, planners, specialists, and analysts in the use of "models" (FARSITE, FlamMap, RERAP-Term), tools/programs (KCFAST, RAWS, FireFamily Plus, WindWizard), and procedures for spatial fire analysis. The approach includes a brief discussion about models and their assumptions and limitations, historical fire and weather analysis, landscape file data acquisition and development, landscape file and model output critique, and model calibration.