National Fire Plan Success Story

Resource Information Unit Contributes to Wildland Firefighting Efforts
Rocky Mountain Region
National Fire Plan - Firefighting
2008

The Resource Information unit in the Rocky Mountain Region recently announced the availability of the Fire Incident Mapping Tools (FIMT) application. FIMT is a prototype product Region 2 spearheaded that is now internationally available to help firefighters manage incidents as they unfold.

FIMT consists of an ArcMap toolbar that furnishes fire GIS specialists with all the ArcMap tools they need to manage the GIS data required to produce maps that support a fire incident. This standardized model provides a consistent framework for all fire GIS personnel.

Previous attempts to manage fire perimeters for a national database required extensive operator interaction to manipulate a variety of nonstandard data in various formats. FIMT allows users to identify the outer perimeter of a fire; assign portions of the perimeter to individual crews on the ground; and symbolize point locations that denote command assignments and line responsibility.

Fire points are used to represent locations such as drop points, spot fires, staging area hazards, and many other features using the firefighting community’s standardized terminology.

First prototyped in 2004, FIMT will now be the U.S. federal standard GIS application for fire incident mapping.

John Varner of Region 2 was the principal architect for this cost-effective software developed with help from the Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) and Forest Service Fire and Aviation program support. The software was developed very inexpensively in a little over a year and is free for anyone to use.

FIMT use is growing. Canada recently put FIMT into production. Australia and New Zealand are evaluating the program for potential adoption into their incident management operations.

Contact: John Varner, jvarner@fs.fed.us; or Joe Frost, NFIC, jfrost@fs.fed.us.