Automated wildfire monitoring and reporting

GHD recognizes that wildfire activity is increasing in frequency and intensity as climate change progresses,  resulting in progressively greater impacts on the natural environment, human health & safety, and asset integrity. Additionally, GHD understands that having access to current information related to wildfire activity is critical for decision
makers for their ability to make effective decisions related to safety and protection. GHD has observed, however, that the current process for staying informed about fire activity is a manual and onerous task.

To help overcome this challenge, GHD developed an automated wildfire monitoring and reporting solution, which frees up resources and provides regular updates to decision makers on latest fire activity. The solution was developed to accomplish the following components:

• Retrieves latest reported fire related information from authoritative sources.
• Compares fire activity relative to client asset locations, and flags fires within a specified distance from any asset for focal monitoring.
• Compares fire activity relative to previous reporting period for fires of interest, highlighting changes to that fire over that timeframe.
• Summarizes fire status and location information for fires of interest in a bulletin and series of maps focused on each asset of concern.
• Publishes the latest fire information within a client centered interactive web-map / dashboard.
• Sends an email notification to a distribution list delivering the bulletin package, and web application access information.
• Performs all tasks automatically relative to a predetermined schedule (e.g. daily).

GHD’s wildfire monitoring and reporting solution achieves the following key benefits:

1. Continuously monitors authoritative government sources for pertinent fire information over an entire asset portfolio or network.
2. Provides clients with asset-centric updates about proximate fire activity, eliminating the need for manual interpretation.
3. Flags critical fire developments within clear reporting deliverables (bulletin, dashboard, maps) for quick review by key decision makers.
4. Frees up critical human resources by utilizing an automated system.

Clients who have utilized this solution have conveyed their appreciation for prompt information delivery in an easy to interpret and intuitive format that gives them situational awareness within the context of their asset portfolio.