Basic integrated fire management tools for early warning and decision-making

Integrated Fire Management (IFM) is a holistic and advanced approach to managing fire on the landscape. It integrates socio-cultural realities, ecological imperatives, and technological aspects of fire management, while considering a wide range of environmental factors such as fire, weather, and vegetation, as well as human dimensions.

Because IFM is complex, several tools can help simplify decision-making and improve fire, land, and resource management outcomes. This course introduces those tools, including fire behaviour prediction, fire danger rating, and early warning systems, and provides the foundational knowledge needed to support the development of effective decision-support systems for IFM and engage all relevant land, resource, and fire management stakeholders and rights holders.

Audience

The primary target audiences for this course are field practitioners, managers, policy-makers, and researchers working in or with operational agencies that manage landscape fires, including:

• National and international agencies involved in fire suppression resource-sharing agreements.
• National and sub-national fire and land management agencies.
• Local community rightsholders and stakeholders.

You will learn about

• The global fire environment, including natural fire regimes and human influence.
• Why adopting an integrated fire management approach.
• The main factors influencing fire behaviour: fuel, weather and topography.
• The role of fire danger and early warning information in decision-making.
• Techniques to develop practical decision-making tools for integrated fire management.

Course structure

This course consists of four lessons of approximately 40-55 minutes each:

• Lesson 1 – Global fire and integrated fire management
• Lesson 2 – Fire behaviour: fuel, weather and topography
• Lesson 3 – Fire danger and early warning
• Lesson 4 – Developing IFM decision-aids