An update on the OK-FIRE program, Oklahoma's weather-based operational decision support system for wildland fire management

Originally funded by a multi-year grant from the Joint Fire Science Program in 2005, “OK-FIRE” is an operational weather-based decision support system which has been developed for wildland fire managers throughout Oklahoma, a state with 22 million acres of wildlands, more than half of the state's total area. Applications include prescribed burning, wildfire anticipation/suppression, and smoke management. Project participants include the USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, US Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, US Army Corps of Engineers, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Oklahoma Forestry Services, Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, The Nature Conservancy, fire departments, emergency managers, and private landowners. Now a program of the Oklahoma Mesonet, OK-FIRE programming, web site, and operational support are provided by the Oklahoma Climatological Survey in Norman, Oklahoma.

With respect to prescribed fire, OK-FIRE benefits include better pre-burn planning and management during the burn, as well as guidance for smoke management. With respect to wildfire, benefits include better anticipation of high fire danger conditions, the ability to determine optimal short-term staffing levels, and better suppression strategies during the wildfire itself. Using the Oklahoma Mesonet of 120 automated weather stations for current/past weather conditions and 84-h forecast output from the National Weather Service's North American Mesoscale (NAM) model for future weather conditions, OK-FIRE has a three-fold emphasis: (1) an expansive suite of past, real-time, and forecast products for fire weather, fire danger, and smoke dispersion; (2) a dedicated OK-FIRE wildland fire management web site (http://okfire.mesonet.org) to act as the delivery mechanism for the above products; and (3) regional training and customer support for the user groups involved.

OK-FIRE was developed as a response to wildland fire managers who requested an integrated, user-friendly system that would provide access to weather, fire danger, and smoke dispersion products, both in a current/recent and in a forecast mode. The web site features major sections devoted to weather, fire, smoke, satellite, radar, air quality, and burn site maps/imagery. An implementation of the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS), the Oklahoma Fire Danger Model provides guidance related to fire danger, and the Oklahoma Dispersion Model, a Gaussian-based plume model, guidance for near-surface smoke dispersal. Products consist of site-specific data boxes, charts, tables, and, using a browser plug-in, maps capable of animation, zooming, and overlays. OK-FIRE allows the user to examine past conditions over the last 30 days as well as view hourly forecast conditions through the end of the latest 84-hour NAM forecast. Current products, based on the Oklahoma Mesonet, are updated every five minutes in the case of weather and dispersion products, and every hour in the case of fire danger products. Forecast products are updated every six hours, using the 00Z, 06Z, 12Z, and 18Z runs of the NAM.

Since 2006 the main author, who is the program manager for OK-FIRE, has conducted an annual series of fall training regional workshops and has taught roughly 800 fire professionals to date. In fall 2010, regional workshops were held at 16 different locations throughout Oklahoma involving about 250 people. Through a combination of educational presentations and computer lab exercises, attendees learn the basics of fire weather, fire danger, and smoke dispersion and become more familiar with the OK-FIRE web site, its products, and their utility. Since the debut of the web site in September 2006, OK-FIRE has seen continually increasing usage by Oklahoma fire managers, an indication that the program is having an impact. Web site “hits”, “visits”, and number of unique visitors (unique IP addresses) continue to rise. In 2010 the total number of hits was over 19 million; the average number of monthly visits, 6783; and the average number of monthly unique visitors, 2178. In the first four months of 2011 alone, monthly statistics showed impressive growth, with each month having more visits and unique visitors than any month in 2010. In April 2011 alone, OK-FIRE had 8410 unique visitors with 28,808 visits. Another indication of impact is the increased documented usage of OK-FIRE during days of increased wildfire activity.

OK-FIRE continues to develop with annual modifications to data ingest programs, models, products, and the web site. For example, in 2010 a suite of 11 NFDRS fuel models was implemented for use with the fire danger model for site-specific data box, chart, and table products. This allows the OK-FIRE user to select a fuel model of choice for use with a particular Mesonet station location. The fuel model being used is now also shown on all data box, chart, and table products when a fire danger product is selected. Other modifications included new graphing technology (not dependent on the plug-in) and a home page scrolling ticker for messages related to fire danger, training opportunities, etc.

This presentation will provide an update on the OK-FIRE program and its products, web site, and training. Some of the new features developed over the past several years will be demonstrated and an assessment of program impacts thus far across Oklahoma will be provided. Future plans will also be mentioned, such as the incorporation of OK-FIRE training into Oklahoma Fire Service Training at Oklahoma State University (OSU), the development of a cell-phone optimized OK-FIRE web site, a presence on Twitter, the incorporation of on-line training, and future fire-related grant research at OSU that may benefit OK-FIRE.