Wildland Fire Management Program

Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS)

National Fire Decision Support Center (NFDSC)

The WFDSS project focuses on the goal of developing a scaleable decision support tool that helps the line officer make good decisions for all unplanned ignitions that escape initial attack or will be managed as wildland fire use events. The WFDSS project scope includes re-engineering the existing Wildland Fire Situation Analysis (WFSA) and Wildland Fire Implementation Plan (WFIP) processes and supporting applications.

This system is intended to assist fire managers and analysts in determining the appropriate management response for fire incidents. It is designed to replace the WFSA (Wildland Fire Situation Analysis) process with one that is more intuitive and easier to use. WFDSS will also incorporate the Wildland Fire Implementation Plan (WFIP) and Long-Term Incident Planning (LTIP) processes.

This project evolved from the need to streamline and improve decision-making processes, as well as take advantage of improvements in technology, fire modeling, and geospatial analysis to address the dramatically increasing size and complexity of wildfires.

The former system, WFSA has been around for 30 years with little change, has become cumbersome to use, and is not scalable or flexible enough for today’s fire management needs.

In June 2005, the National Fire and Aviation Executive Board chartered WFDSS to replace WFSA in 2009.

Learn more at the WFDSS Homepage