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<br /> <br /> <br />Community Wildfire Protection Plan 33 September 2018 <br />Developing, to the greatest degree possible, accurate data on wildfire risk data is critical for effective <br />fire management strategies. The PNRA analysis uses a software package called FlamMap. FlamMap is <br />a fire behavior mapping and analysis program that computes potential fire behavior characteristics <br />such as spread rate, flame length, and fire line intensity. These outputs are resolved spatially across <br />the region to estimate the following: <br />• Likelihood of a fire burning <br />• Intensity of a fire if one should occur <br />• Exposure of assets and resources based on their locations <br />• Susceptibility of those assets and resources to wildfire <br />The outputs and comparisons of FlamMap can be used to identify hazardous combinations of fuel <br />and topography, aiding in prioritizing fuel treatments (e.g., <br />prescribed fire and mechanical fuel treatments). In addition, the <br />risk data can be used to support fire operations in response to <br />wildfire incidents by identifying those assets and resources most <br />susceptible to fire. This can aid in decision making for prioritizing <br />and positioning of firefighting resources. <br />FlamMap does not include a temporal scale and does not simulate <br />the growth and spread of fire in the way that wildfire simulation <br />tools are intended to do. While landscape tools are useful in <br />planning and risk reduction, additional tools are key to preparing <br />effective fire response strategies during the preparation phase and <br />in effectively distributing resources during a wildfire response. <br />4.2.2 Wildfire Simulation and Mapping <br />Computer simulation modeling of hypothetical wildfires provides a <br />robust and scientifically defensible means of mapping wildfire <br />likelihood and potential intensity. Fire models use weather data <br />from long-term stations in the county, along with detailed spatial <br />data depicting topography and aspects of vegetation that <br />characterize wildland fuels to simulate fire spread across the <br />landscape from semi-random ignition points. Simulations can be <br />run for an entire suite of statistically possible weather scenarios <br />across thousands of iterations of a whole fire season using a <br />model called FSim. The outputs from FSim include maps of the <br />annual probability of fire occurrence and the most likely intensity <br />at a very fine scale. <br />Both the Landscape Risk <br />Assessment (PNRA) and <br />computer simulation (FSim) <br />efforts used input data <br />representing landscape fuel <br />conditions as of 2015, and <br />weather data from Remote <br />Automated Weather Stations <br />(RAWS) in and around Kittitas <br />County. Additional details <br />about the two projects are <br />described in a comparison <br />report mutually produced by <br />Headwaters Economics and <br />PNRS (Headwaters <br />Economics 2014). <br />