Fire Science You Can Use: Science for Safe Wildfire Operations

GeoLCES: Geospatial Support for Evaluating Wildland Firefighter Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, and Safety Zones

Presented by Dan Jimenez, Research Engineer

This presentation introduces GeoLCES: an analytical framework designed to enhance LCES implementation using remote sensing and geospatial modeling. GeoLCES comprises three spatially explicit safety metrics, derived from airborne lidar data: (1) visibility index (VI), which quantifies landscape-wide visibility, aiding the evaluation of lookouts and communications; (2) escape route index (ERI), which quantifies mobility, facilitating the identification of escape routes and avoidance of entrapment-prone area; and (3) proportional safe separation distance (pSSD), which quantifies the relative degree of sufficient fuel separation, enabling the identification of suitable safety zones. In this presentation I’ll describe the theory, computation, application, and interpretation of each of these three metrics as a multivariate, pre-fire decision support tool.

Containment Lines, Fuel Breaks, PODs, and Suppression Success: A Case Study of the 2021 Schneider Springs Fire

Presented by Jesse Young, Research Economist/Forester

This presentation synthesizes recent research on containment line effectiveness to examine how wildfire suppression outcomes are shaped by where and when firefighters engage the fire. Using recent research and the Schneider Springs Fire as a case example, Jesse Young discusses fuel breaks and PODs as strategic structures that influence containment through their use as engagement locations, rather than as fire-stopping treatments. The briefing provides manager-relevant guidance for planning, maintaining, and evaluating containment systems under varying fire behavior and operational conditions.