Wildfire Recovery & Restoration Using GIS | Build Wildland Fire Resilience

Assess, stabilize, and restore the environment

After a wildfire, it's essential to assess damage and stabilize environments. Using GIS, agencies can evaluate damage and clear debris, analyze burn severity to identify high-risk areas for postfire flooding and landslides, plan stabilization efforts, and determine long-term environmental restoration actions.

Recover after a wildland fire with location intelligence

Assess and remove
Stabilize
Restore

Inspect damage and plan for cleanup

After a wildland fire, it's important for firefighters, government leaders, utility company staff, and others to assess the extent of the damage. Using mobile devices to collect data and pictures of destroyed residences, infrastructure, and associated debris, staff can map, inventory, and communicate damage in real time.

Stabilize and rehabilitate burned areas

Burn severity is an assessment of how much heat a fire transferred into the ground. High burn severities with intense fires can leave areas at an increased risk of erosion, leading to flooding, debris flows, and landslides. Using GIS, fire staff can determine burn severity to target the high-priority areas for rehabilitation and stabilization efforts.

Plan long-term recovery and rehabilitation

Postwildfire rehabilitation and stabilization efforts require long-term management, as recovery for burned areas can take decades. By mapping and monitoring soil and vegetation changes with GIS, fire managers can develop and modify recovery plans and manage these efforts in the long term for greater resilience.

Map of burned areas and photo of burned trees

case study

Location analytics supports wildfire relief

Direct Relief chose ArcGIS Insights for data analysis and population tracking during the 2018 Camp Fire in California's Butte County.

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ArcGIS Tutorial

Assess burn scars with satellite imagery

Calculate a burn index using imagery bands to measure fires in Montana.

View the ArcGIS tutorial

ArcGIS Tutorial

Calculate landslide risk in burned areas

Use distributed raster analysis to analyze burn severity, slope, and land cover.

View the ArcGIS tutorial

Solutions for wildland fire rehabilitation

Damage Assessment

Helps you determine initial damage assessments, monitor disaster impact, and create damage reports to brief stakeholders and the public.

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Emergency Debris Management

Helps you expedite initial debris clearance, assess debris removal needs, and monitor debris removal activities.

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Environmental Analysis

Used to evaluate and understand environmental impacts of proposed development projects and solicit feedback from stakeholders.

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Wildland fire strategies

Disaster Response Program (DRP)

Request immediate assistance for an active emergency response or find out how we help when disaster strikes.

Recovery

Assess, stabilize, and restore the environment

Recover after a wildland fire with location intelligence

Inspect damage and plan for cleanup

Stabilize and rehabilitate burned areas

Plan long-term recovery and rehabilitation

Location analytics supports wildfire relief

Assess burn scars with satellite imagery

Calculate landslide risk in burned areas

Solutions for wildland fire rehabilitation

Damage Assessment

Emergency Debris Management

Environmental Analysis

Wildland fire strategies

Preparedness

Mitigation

Response

Recovery

Supporting initiatives across public safety

Disaster Response Program (DRP)

Public safety federal funding options

Real-time situational awareness

Special event management

Health and human crisis

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