Friday, April 15, 2011

Wildfires: Good Information About Tools for Prediction and Mitigation

Many regions across our nation have seen months of dry weather conditions and high winds which have created a perfect recipe for one of natures most powerful hazards. Wildfires, like tornados, hurricanes, and floods are one of natures most feared and hazardous forces. The strength and speed of a wildfire incident can destroy hundreds of acres in a matter of hours and thousands of acres in days. Property, lives and time fall victim to this force which can exhaust even the best human efforts and skill. Recently, Dr. Ahmed Abukhater, Esri Global Industry Manager for Community Development, authored the article "GIS-Based Community Risk Assessment: Tools for wildfire prediction and mitigation" which profiles how regional planners and individuals responsible for establishing policy, need tools and technology to make accurate decisions regarding use of land and assets to avoid hazards such as wildfires in regions most vulerable to natural disasters and earth changing human-created accidents. Abukhater leads ESRI's global marketing strategies in planning and economic development and works as a visionary of enterprise GIS. In this article, Abukhater states: "GIS is an invaluable tool for conducting this analysis to produce actionable knowledge and intelligence. By integrating data, geoprocessing tools, ModelBuilder, and visualization tools, the impact of human activities on the natural and built environment can be evaluated. State-of-the-art GIS visualization and analytic tools help officials understand and analyze the spatial and temporal characteristics of wildfire." Dr. Abukhater explains further: "GIS can provide these effective planning tools and insights to prepare for natural and manmade disasters and mitigate their impact. Both policy makers and the community at large can plan for pre- and postdisaster response and mitigation efforts." He outlines that making improvements in those areas most vunerable to wildfires and their dangers based on information produced by data process through technologies can spare human lives and our natural resources. "Given the importance of forest-urban interface fire prediction and mitigation, this article describes how to conduct a community risk assessment from a planning point of view and proposes a GIS-based multiple-criteria evaluation (MCE) framework for analyzing, predicting, and ultimately mitigating the impact of wildfires" Abukhater says. Read More of Dr. Abukhater's article HERE

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