1FIREWX Critical Wildfire Intelligence Gaps – Near and Medium-term Solutions

Wildfire is a growing national challenge due to the compounded risk due to accumulating fuels related to forest management practices, evolving environmental impacts from a shifting climate and encroachment of civilization on wildland forests. A consortium of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs), and Non-Profit Laboratories (NPLs) formed a Wildfire Working Group to bring their collective expertise to bear to help address the burgeoning national wildfire crisis. Based on extensive stakeholder engagement, we assessed capabilities, observed shortfalls, and conducted a deep dive into seven critical wildfire capability gaps to identify current and future technology solutions. The seven gaps include wildfire detection, persistent wildfire surveillance, fuels intelligence, weather intelligence, unmounted firefighter tracking, last mile connectivity, and data interoperability and integration. In this talk, we summarize the results of our stakeholder engagement process and shortfall identification, discuss our process to identify and assess solution alternatives, and describe key findings across the seven capability gaps.