Dataset of U.S. Incident Management Situation Reports from 2007 to 2021
Wildfire data play an important role in providing historical fire context, forecasting fire activity and response, and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of fire management and planning. The national Situation Reporting (ICS-209) contains detailed information about daily wildfire characteristics, suppression resource requests and assignments, and other information about individual incidents. The SIT-209 archive is publicly available.
Until now, only a portion of the SIT-209 data (the Incident Status Summary ICS-209 portion) has been prepared for use in research. This dataset complements that portion with a processed, quality-checked version of the Incident Management Situation Report (IMSR) component of the SIT-209 application. The IMSRs are produced daily during wildfire season to provide a complete and concise synopsis of ongoing wildfire activity to the wildfire response community. They inform about the risk and impact of new and ongoing wildfires in every geographic area coordination center of the U.S. and the availability of personnel and equipment responding to those fires.
This research-ready dataset supports broader use of these data, which have high potential value for managers and researchers seeking to improve future wildfire management and planning. It provides a unique combination of both wildfire activity and suppression resource assignments, which can be used to provide historical wildfire activity context across regions of the U.S. Statistics and visual examinations based on IMSR data can provide insights for wildfire management and trigger compelling questions for fire research. The IMSR holds valuable fire data that can serve as inputs for building a variety of quantitative fire models to inform wildfire management decision making.