Colorado State University Developing New Maps to Help Fight Wildfires

There are a lot of decisions that have to be made when there is a wildfire.

With finite firefighting resources, how much water goes here? How many firefighters go there? How much effort is put on one front of the fire versus another?

With all fires, these choices must be made, and the decisions can never be easy.

Well, Colorado State University, the Warner College of Natural Resources with the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) are creating a map to help such decisions to be made.

The new cartography will do it's best to determine what structures exist, where they exist, and how they'll be affected should a wildfire flare up. After the map is in use, when the next blaze ignites, those in charge of the firefighting effort can have a more detailed map that helps them make decisions of what can feasibly be saved with the available resources.

Wildfire incident management teams and fire districts that triage areas and deploy resources during a fire need to know where individual structures are located. Determining access routes, the physical characteristics around buildings, and the proximity to vegetation or other buildings provides valuable information for emergency response.

Colorado State University

The most costly wildfires we've ever seen in Colorado have hit the state in the last five years, so there are all kinds of mitigation efforts and preparations for the future happening across agencies. This new information from Colorado State University will help future firefighting efforts.