Composite factors - Severity group - Latest

Wildfire Risk Extreme Product Guide

Product type
Data
Portfolio
Enrich
Product family
Enrich Boundaries > Risk Boundaries
Product
Wildfire Risk Extreme
Version
Latest
Language
English
Product name
Wildfire Risk Extreme
Title
Wildfire Risk Extreme Product Guide
Copyright
2024
First publish date
2024
Last edition
2024-08-12
Last publish date
2024-08-12T13:47:50.481457
Figure 1. Contributing factors - severity

Severity impacts reflect the impact of wildfire based on traditional fire behavior modeling techniques. This requires detailed geospatial information about fuel, topography, and weather. LANDFIRE (http://landfire.cr.usgs.gov/viewer) is a nationwide product that provides fuel and topography inputs for fire behavior modeling.

Note: LANDFIRE is current through 2022, capturing changes to the fuel profile (including those associated with wildfire perimeters) through the end of 2022. This means that INTENSITY, CROWN_FIRE, and EMBER_CAST values are also current through 2022. Wildfire perimeter data is current through October 1 2023. These perimeters can be used to identify locations where LANDFIRE data may not be current.

Weather information is derived from publicly available (https://registry.opendata.aws/noaa-hrrr-pds/) maps for 99th-percentile temperature, humidity, and wind speed.

Fire behavior calculations are made using modified BehavePlus and FlamMap code originally produced by the USDA Forest Service. Modifications are focused specifically on the processing of weather input. For each pixel (a 30-meter by 30-meter square portion of the landscape), the fuel type, topography (aspect, slope, and elevation), and weather parameters such as fuel moisture and wind (both at the 99th percentile) are used to predict how a fire would behave. These predictions are then used to produce the overall risk map.

Although a percentile-based approach to weather is used in fire behavior calculations, it is incorrect to assume that this alone is sufficient to address future probability. This is the exact reason why Frequency group variables are also included in Wildfire Risk Extreme.