GeoLCES: A new framework to analyze wildland fire safety protocols
Wildland firefighters play a critical role in managing the complex relationship between humans and fire. To reduce the inherent risks that come with this role, firefighters use safety protocols such as lookouts, communications, escape routes, and safety zones (LCES). Currently, firefighters designate LCES on the ground with limited support from geospatial information, despite the inherently spatial nature of the LCES protocol. Researchers from the USDA Forest Service and the University of Utah recently introduced GeoLCES – an analytical framework that uses remote sensing and geospatial modeling to improve the implementation of LCES.
GeoLCES contains three location-specific safety metrics, derived from airborne lidar data: (1) visibility index (VI), which quantifies landscape-wide visibility to aid in the evaluation of lookouts and communications; (2) escape route index (ERI), which quantifies mobility to help identify escape routes and avoid entrapment-prone areas; and (3) proportional safe separation distance (pSSD), which quantifies the relative degree of sufficient fuel separation to help identify suitable safety zones. To highlight the implementation of this protocol on a useful scale, the research team mapped GeoLCES at 30-meter resolution throughout the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. They also demonstrated how GeoLCES could be used in wildfire operations through a case study from a specific wildfire incident.
GeoLCES is the first analytical framework designed to use geospatial data to help identify LCES on the ground. While locally informed knowledge plays a critical role in LCES on wildfire incidents, the best-available data, science, and computational algorithms can make LCES safer and more effective. If properly applied, GeoLCES has the potential to increase wildland firefighter safety at a time of increasing fire management demands.
Graphical representations and basic calculations of the three GeoLCES metrics, including the visibility index (VI; top), escape route index (ERI; middle), and proportional safe separation distance (pSSD; bottom). For simplicity, these metrics are illustrated linearly (i.e., one dimensionally); however, in a geospatial context, they are computed in two dimensions.