Arizona FIRE MAP: Background

In February, 2004, the Forest Health Advisory and Oversight Councils began to formally address the need for mapping and assessment tools that could facilitate the integration of forest health data across jurisdictions to facilitate planning, reporting and decision making. The most pressing need: statewide fuels treatment data management, visualization, and reporting. The Councils tasked the newly formed Mapping and Assessment (M&A) Subcommittee with making recommendations on the development of an on-line application that could facilitate data sharing, data standardization, and reporting using the fuels treatments example as the initial challenge to be addressed. Members of M & A specified the fundamental needs and the State Cartographer's Office (SCO) developed a project plan and sought out resources to develop a prototype application, The project was eventually named: Arizona FIRE MAP - which stands for the Arizona Fuels, Information, Restoration, and Education - Mapping and Assessment Program.

Phase 1 of this project, the Fuels Treatment Module, is being managed by the State Cartographer's Office and will include an Internet-based interactive mapping application for viewing of completed and planned fuel treatment projects statewide. The project proposal was approved and funded by the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs.

User specifications were initially developed by an Environmental Economic Communities Organization consultant as part of efforts to identify and encourage participation from a wide range of federal, state, tribal and local data providers. The State Cartographers Office (SCO), with assistance from M & A members, completed specification of application functionality, fine-tuned the data model, set data collection parameters, are coordinating data collection efforts, and normalizing data sets for inclusion in the system. The Arizona Remote Sensing Center (ARSC) at the University of Arizona will complete initial development of the web application by summer of 2005.