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This is an excerpt from Fear and Fire

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THIS IS A TEST

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THIS IS A TEST

by Tom Harbour I still remember the look in her eyes. The fear. The thought that her children were in the path of an unpredictable and insatiable wildfire. And that she would never see them again. That moment has stayed with me for forty years. It was the Greer Fire, my first time as an incident commander. It was a complex initial and extended attack. Fire behavior was extreme, homes and civilians were at risk, ground and aerial responders were seeking guidance, and we were coordinating with multiple agencies. When that mother interrupted the inexperienced incident commander (IC) I was, for a moment, everything froze. All I could picture was catastrophe. In the midst of all that chaos, I wondered, had we failed in our most fundamental purpose -- to save lives? Thankfully my training and instincts kicked in after a few seconds. We connected the Sheriff and the mother. Her children were far from danger. Despite the extreme conditions and risk, we stopped that fire after several tense hours at just less than a hundred acres. But that experience haunts me nonetheless, a reminder of the all too terrible force we face in those kinds of conditions and in places that like. From the moment we deploy to a wildfire, we face a phenomenon that is unknowable, unpredictable, and unrelenting. To compensate for our inability to guess a fire’s unknowable “intentions”, we’ve invested in acquiring information. The more, the better: Beyond situational awareness of the fire, there’s weather, topography, and fuel conditions. More recently, we’ve added social media and UAV feeds to the mix. Our thirst is insatiable. Historically, we’ve worked to satiate that thirst with experience. Experience yields valuable information. But as I saw in that first command, more information doesn’t mean better information. At some point, it all just becomes noise, a veritable firehose of data that is rendered incomprehensible by its very prodigiousness and chaos. Wheat and chaff are inseparably mixed. Important becomes unrecognizable in the crowd. Of course, we’ve always felt information overload was a problem. But neuroscience confirms it; a person’s working memory can only keep track of so many things at a time. The fact is, we hit our cognitive limit decades ago. With ever-increasing data from sensors, drones, and other technologies, the problem is only getting worse. If we are not careful, instead of perfecting the decision-making process, we’ll end up distorting it with information overload. Instead of empowering ICs with the most relevant intelligence, we’ll be displacing it with the loudest or most recent. But what if we could asses, sort, filter, and disseminate the right information? As we deploy technology in the field, we must be careful about adding new video streams and additional displays and we must do more to leverage the capacity of the human mind. We need to ensure that ICs and agency administrators (AAs) can focus on their core tasks of monitoring, deciding, and acting (or perception, comprehension, and projecting), not wasting valuable time and effort sifting through information. Our focus needs to be on delivering timely, high-quality data that can be used effectively by decision-makers. So what should these tools do? Well to start, they would organize, fuse, and validate the information. The result: a comprehensive repository of validated, accurately sequenced, critical information that has been analyzed and vetted for best use -- a shared set of values. The tools would then distribute the information when and where needed through a user interface that allows the information to be quickly and easily consumed. But beyond that, they would apply machine learning, computational power, and applied intelligence to the problem. Of course, ensuring intelligence is accurate and timely is paramount. But what if we could also prioritize it before it gets to the IC or Agency Administrator? Determine which stream was even relevant in a particular moment? What if these technologies could do the grunt work first, saving the most taxing decisions for the human in charge? We should find ways to arrange, clean, fuse, and present data and information in a manner that frees the human mind to make the extraordinary decisions it is capable of making. This isn’t science fiction -- much of this technology already exists. We just need to embrace it in the wildland firefighting community. If we do -- and work with technology companies to integrate it into our organizations -- we can be that much closer to achieving the “holy grail of firefighter safety.” We can reduce exposure, minimize risk, and save more lives and property. And we can focus on what really matters -- the people we’re out there to protect and the natural resources we’re out there to conserve. THIS IS A TEST

by Tom Harbour Firefighters/first responders want to survive and succeed despite the complex and unpredictable environments the face. They believe in their sisters and brothers. Chiefs and Agency Administrators want to be effective and efficient leaders. They believe in first responders and in the work they have been tasked to do. Everyone views incidents from varying, individually crafted, perspectives. Fire, emergencies, and disasters unite us. Cornea is honored to work alongside these individuals to bring them the information they need to improve their probability of success. While success means different things to different people, we can all agree the best emergencies are the ones that never happen, followed by the ones we are thoroughly prepared for, and from which we fully recover. Agency Administrators and first responders often face difficult questions about wicked problems. They share concerns, but they do not share the same consequences from the risks they face. Some face immediate consequences, particularly in the face of fire, while others face indirect consequences. Risk can never be eliminated from the chaotic world of fire or disasters, but the risk can be managed better with better information. Cornea believes, “better information, better decisions”. You do too. Knowledge is power, and harvesting, fusing, and analyzing the data important to firefighters and their leaders is critical towards empowering the future. Shared knowledge establishes trust going forward.   THIS IS A TEST

The most important questions are the “primary” questions.  They are the questions which are most critical – but why?

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Escape route mapping has to be done in real-time or near-real-time, which requires three things: (1) the location of the crew; (2) the location of the designated safety zone; and (3) the extent and predicted spread of the fire. In the absence of a widely-adopted, GPS-driven, mobile platform to implement such a real-time mapping effort, operational escape route mapping may not be currently feasible. Cornea is focused on this. We think you should be too.   Escape Route Index: A Spatially-Explicit Measure of Wildland Firefighter Egress Capacity Authors: Michael J. Campbell, Wesley G. Page, Philip E. Dennison, and Bret W. Butler   THIS IS A TEST

What happens when you apply Operations Research to the complex, uncertain and highly variable conditions that define wildfire management? You get mathematically optimal strategies with the highest probability of success, lowest possible risk, and maximum cost-efficiency.   Designing Operationally Relevant Daily Large Fire Containment Strategies Using Risk Assessment Results Authors: Yu Wei, Matthew P. Thompson, Joe H. Scott, Christopher D. O’Connor, and Christopher J. Dunn   THIS IS A TEST

This is how we measure performance in wildland fire management: - Relative Production Index (RPI) - Productive Efficiency (PE) - Daily Resource Capacity (DRC) - Fire Line Effectiveness (FLE) - Air Tanker Drop Conditions (ATDC) - Responder Safety and Exposure - Decision Quality   Wildfire Response Performance Measurement: Current and Future Directions Authors: Matthew P. Thompson, Christopher J. Lauer, David E. Calkin, Jon D. Rieck, Crystal S. Stonesifer, and Michael S. Hand   THIS IS A TEST

It has taken us almost a hundred years to recognize this, but as a society, we must forge a new relationship with wildland fire. Safety, effectiveness, and efficiency - we have to do better. But how do we change the system? In the below paper, Matthew Thompson, Donald MacGregor, Christopher Dunn, David Calkin, and John Phipps outline a better future.   Rethinking the Wildfire Management System   THIS IS A TEST