So part of the issue here may also again be budget. Cal Fire being ummm large, things are always more expensive to change. Or it could just be personal preference on the people releasing the maps.
You also make good points as well though regarding how you use the intel.
@2ndLine1stWord I can tell you for a fact it is not a budget constraint for any agency. It is a policy/culture type decision. Nothing more. I do think things will change.
It makes a huge difference whether a mistake happens using info in house (fire personnel) vs public.
The info has to be vetted to be valid. Canāt tell you the number of times Iāve been out hiking for hours, searching for multiple spots over the line with a map from an IR flight and never find the spot. Whatever it was (hot rocks?) that looked like a heat signature wasnāt where it was supposed to be.
Canāt think of how many times Iāve read on here, be careful what you say, thereās a lot of experts on here. Once thatās established, youāre on the hook for the products you publish and you dont have boots on the ground vetting the raw data. No big pockets to save your butt. This tech, so far, is too young that an accident hasnāt happened yet.
Iām not hating on anybody for nerding out on this stuff. That was a reason given above for want of data. Push the boundaries of this stuff! Go for it! IMO, this professional forum isnāt the place to voice frustrations when the info isnāt released and you have no idea why. As an active firefighter, use your professionably available routes for answers. If that doesnāt work then maybe, itās need to know, or nunya. Hell thereās tons of notes involved in decision making that go into the doc box that arenāt immediately public, or may never be.
When Iāve been out on recon/mapping flights, for whatever reason the pilot cut corners, or swung wide and Iāve had to estimate actual line when I got back to Sit. Just making the point of vetting and validation. I guess if media wants to contract its own flights, they own the data and use it how they will.
One huge piece missing in this dialog is the law enforcement side of the fire response. Law is catching up (as in Fire is nearing the finish line and law just passed the first water station) in scaling their initial response to these large fires on day one. On multiple incidents this year already, and plenty in the past few years, there is a literal wall blocking information flow from fire discipline to law. Sometimes itās accidental, others itās ineptitude on one or both sides, and in others it the typical politics.
Speaking from the rooms where it happens at the Dixie to some recent 2022 lightning bust incidents, law has been in the dark as to where the fire has been, or is headed to, and their local tech gurus in the dept or their SAR team know where to find FIRIS (or at the time, the Courtney data) in SarTopo etc. and it was a palpable sigh of relief and immediate switch in attitude in the ICP as soon as that hit the projector screen and they can finally act with a definitive purpose vs reactively scrambling.
So thereās a lot of coinciding wins and benefits not often seen outside the inside-baseball of the fire discipline, advantageous to the community at large. Itās not all about the hobbyist.
Very large (tens of thousands) populations have been evacuated based solely on finally getting a recent legit perimeter from an aircraft. The sheriff was hesitant on the big red GO button because the data was sketch, not wanting to disrupt entire communities unnecessarily, but talk about slamming the button when aircraft data serendipitously arrived.
edit: changed palatable to palpable, nothing tastes good in an ICPā¦
@bootstrap gonna go on a little rant here.
If you donāt think I have not rocked the boat, asked the hard questions you donāt know me very well. The reason FIRIS is the way it is with an open KML network link is because I specifically asked for it and it was approved. The idea being that all responders and the public should know where a fire is at. Just like a hurricane. There should be nothing secret about the perimeter of a fire.
So I hear this argument a lot about IR data needs to be vetted? And by whom would vet this intel before sharing it? How does one look at IR data and determine if itās accurate or not? Please enlighten me? Perhaps I am missing something about using remote sensing. An IRIN takes NIROPS line scan data and interprets it, uses the old perimeter as guide, and makes the new map. They can spot some anomalies, heck I have even got phone calls from the IRIN asking about a location they saw way outside the line, we sent a crew, it was a homeless person with a camp fire. The sensor being used does make a large difference with accuracy. Walked people into spots on the Camp Fire with an airborne sensor at night using the Scan Eagle. Spots that would have gone undetected.
Comparing the accuracy of you being on a flight with a GPS and a pilot swinging wide versus the data that comes from a TK-9 sensor and interpreted by an airborne sensor operator is comparing a fine point marker to a paint roller. Maybe thats what is missing here. Understanding the accuracy of the sensor on AA-51, FIRIS, Courtney.
So we have had FIRIS for two plus years, mapping fires, sharing it publicly while still airborne. Anyone had an issue with it? Anyone seen any bad things happen? Still waiting for a real example of a negative outcome of what could happen if someone made a decision using a public perimeter from an IR flight.
@norcalscan made a good point, its not just the firefighters going to these incidents its law enforcement as well that can benefit from less barriers to the information. These incidents are cooperative in nature, not everyone is from the same agency, so why would we make it hard to get an update perimeter in everyones hands including the public. We would rather have them use products from NASA FIRMS like @pyrogeography shared?
I will end with, this is a professional site and this is a professional discussion. My agency had multiple units on fires right now and the most open and easily accessible data on fire perimeter for them comes from FIRIS. I am confident other agencies will follow in their example.
Is anyone else having problems with the FTP site? I am getting an error āYou cannot visit ftp.nifc.gov right now because the website uses HSTS. Network errors and attacks are usually temporary, so this page will probably work later.ā
So a quick explanation of MODIS. MODIS stands for Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, the key words being Moderate Resolution. Itās a roughly 500 pound satellite orbiting 437 miles above the earth in a polar orbit. The satellites are over 20 years old and were designed to have a 6 year life expectancy. If I read NASAās data correctly, they were never designed to give the quality of resolution and geo referencing even remotly comparable to Firis. If you look at the pictures comparing MODIS data to Firis data you can see the difference in the data. MODIS resolution, depending on which sensor youāre talking about is between a tenth of a mile and a half mile. Thats why the MODIS data quality cannot be compared to FIRIS. Two different operational objectives and for fire Modis is a good quick and dirty reference to where the heat is but beyond that it has little use for the boots on the ground. Pyrogeography nailed it in his post, but without all the technospeak.
NIFC FTP url was changed a while ago, they probably dropped the redirect. The new FTP is at: Index of /public/incident_specific_data
Thank you!
Not sure if I am considered an adult or not but here it goesā¦
35 years in the fire service. 29 of it with a large agency. 23 years as a Div/Sup, 15 years as a OSC, on a type 1 team.Current chief officer. Cadre member on multiple statewide cadres.
I have seen the best in people and the worst. I have watched as people have taken advantage of horrible situations to enrich themselves, better their position politically and advance their careers while throwing fellow firefighters under the wheels. I have watched decisions get made based on ego and perceived importance that had nothing to do with the mission and hurt the public.
I have watched private corporations exact influence into an incident and use former firefighters to push that influence. I have watched entire communities disintegrate before my eyes. Two years ago tomorrow I was forced to ask myself if one of the sets of human remains that I found was in the position it was in because they were praying before the fire overtook them or all the moisture was driven out of their large muscles and caused their body to retract into that pose.
I watched a fire that was less than two acres with resources on it have another agency release those resources, only to have the fire blow out. I would later stand at a property I own as the fire was bearing down on it and watch my elderly neighbors break down as they though they would lose everything they worked for.
I was on Dixe from day 1ā¦ and I mean right away. I was in the tent and went through every team transition and watched failures every day. Failures of leadership, failures of agencies and was lied to on multiple occasionsā¦ right to my face.
Then I have to sit through community meetings where people have been fed inaccurate information and they question our motives and methods, much of that stoked by SM( including people on this site).
I have to then endure public comment and interactions with questions about how āYou manage the landāā¦ the agency I work for does not own any landā¦ we just protect it.
I then have to watch as people throw rocks on multiple platforms , but they are not aware of the struggles that we have with control agencies within the state.
I watch as ideas are floated that are not based in any sort of reality or tied to any risk model and are completely separated from the current state that we are in.
You cannot compare what occurred with a nomadic culture 400 years ago who numbered in the hundreds of thousands to a time where there is 41 million people in the worlds 9th largest economy.
I am not an āarmchair QB: but rather someone who is in the middle of the fight. Someone who has to wage war against the control agencies, someone who has to wage war against disinformation and someone who has to endure the intolerance of any fire destroying anything.
I am direct and unapologetic for that. Once I retire I plan to shed the moniker I use on here and use my real name. I have no problem standing behind any statement I have made about anything or anyone.
I understand that it may piss a few people off and while it is not always personal, I am personally tied to the communities I protect.
Back when the fire service started you payed a fee to have a placard"fire markā placed on your house so that the competing ācompaniesā would protect or salvage your home.
That has changed into the patch that we wear on our shoulders.
The patch is meant to represent the people who pay your salary. In my case it covers a really large areas.
What I have seen is that āweā are the last voice for the little person. The person who only a mobile home and does not have the resources to send a retired employee to the ICP to influence the operation. We represent that person against fellow local, state and federal agencies who get caught up in some ridiculous self imposed rules that end up hurting the public.
If I come across as āholier than thouā well so be it. I hope once I am gone that someone takes my position and protects my family that way.
If I come across as intolerant of failure- that is misrepresented. I can accept failure, I cannot except quitting or not trying.
If I am critical of those who are critical of me( us) it is because I see firsthand the sacrifices and effort that is put in and I understand the enormous pressures and expectations being placed on our IMTās and personnel.
I get back after getting my ass kicked for 59 days to read comments on here about āarm chair QBā and errant firing operationsā¦ sorry just boils my blood.
@norcal74 i would love to separate the discussion of āarm chair QB/after action reviewā and the concept of sharing a perimeter of a fire. Two totally different things. I think somehow they have got linked in together. Carry on.
I agree with AJ - thereās a lot of extraneous discussions here outside the core question/discussion on polygon perimeter access, which is why Iām here. And I know this forum is simplistic in how we can reply and direct responses to, so I donāt take things personal here unless explicitly called out, and even then I typically just shrug my shoulders and carry on. With that, I want to be sure this statement is clear in case itās misunderstood, that I have not and will never attack any fire agency or pit one against the other, or directly attack an individual. Anyone who thinks different can read every one of my posts, including the edits. Call me out if anyone thinks I do.
Hi can you guys check https://maps.takserver.us ? I have users saying they cant access it. DM me if you have issues please.
It will not load for me.
No dice for me, eitherā¦
That one punches straight in AJ
There is DNS issue somewhere in the interwebs. Perhaps a data center had a major power failure. Friends in SLO can connect to the redirect url but folks down in so cal cannot.
Probably doesnāt help, but it times out in the Nashville area.