FireCon: Daily Fire Containment Suitability

Fire behavior is more extreme and unpredictable than we’ve seen in the past. Changes in climate, wildfire complexity, and forest and fuel conditions outpace even the most advanced fire modeling systems. To navigate this complexity, wildfire responders rely on decision-support tools to reduce risk.

FireCon, or Daily Fire Containment Suitability, is a decision support system for wildfire responders to determine where they’ll have the best chance of successfully containing a fire. It uses artificial intelligence to incorporate daily variability in fire weather, fuel dynamics, resource deployments, and other information that enables responders to adapt to changing weather conditions and fire management actions.

Researchers and managers are using FireCon during the 2025 fire season, but it is not yet publicly available.

FireCon builds on the Potential Control Location (PCL) Suitability map, which uses machine learning to harvest data from over twenty years of past fire containment successes and failures. Whereas the Potential Control Location Suitability map is only updated annually and provides a static snapshot of potential control locations, FireCon reflects real-time conditions. This new and improved model opens the door to more strategic decision-making and with greater precision. Compared to Potential Control Location Suitability, FireCon can more accurately portray and predict the dynamic fire management environment, across the full range of moderate to extreme fire behavior.

FireCon is on track to drastically enhance the wildland fire decision-making environment. Prior to the Potential Control Location Suitability map, fire managers who engaged a fire had success about 30 percent of the time. Use of the Potential Control Location Suitability map has doubled success rates to about 60 percent. Using FireCon, fire managers can increase their success rate from to 75-80 percent.

 FireCon was developed through a public-private partnership between the USDA Forest Service Research and Development and Microsoft.

Purpose

FireCon is a decision support system for wildfire responders to determine where they’ll have the best chance of successfully containing a fire. With more accurate data reflecting near real-time changes in conditions, FireCon enables fire managers to improve success rates of wildfire containment and reduces firefighter exposure to wildfire hazards.

Overview and Applicability

While FireCon reduces decision-making time pressures, it cannot replace human judgment or a fire manager’s experience, nor does it promise success. It also doesn’t account for other important considerations like public safety or fire responder safety.