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State Wildfire Strategic Plan Features IT, Innovation Initiatives

The Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s new Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire would use technology to help achieve its goals.

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A new Strategic Plan for Expanding the Use of Beneficial Fire released by the Governor’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force seeks to expand the use of “prescribed fire and cultural burning” techniques to make forests more resilient to blazes – and to exploit technology and innovation in tracking and monitoring them.

In the plan, released late last month, the task force looks to expand and guide so-called “beneficial fires,” expanding these conflagrations to 400,000 acres yearly by 2025 in an effort to treat 1 million acres annually. California, the governor’s office noted, invested $1.5 billion in wildfire resilience in 2021 alone, including significant support for prescribed fire and cultural burning. Among the technology and innovation takeaways:

  • In an effort to lower the regulatory barriers to so-called beneficial fires, the state will launch an online “prescribed fire permitting system” capable of streamlining review and approval of “prescribed fire projects.” In the plan, it calls upon the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) to work with the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and air districts to stand up a system that will enable private burns via a “web-based portal,” and deliver “consistency” in the review and issuing of prescribed fire permits. To smooth regulations, the plan also calls for the continued investment in “fire behavior and smoke management” model development and application, to better inform decision-making by air quality managers – and to better train these managers.
  • CARB will “promote and improve” the expansion of its Smoke Spotter app to “monitor, assess and mitigate” the potentially bad public health impacts of fire smoke. Deployed in May 2021, the app offers public information on prescribed fires nearby and hourly data from air monitors. Improvements to the app will include a “24-hour smoke forecast” and better wildfire information.
  • CAL FIRE and the task force will partner on a “dedicated public web portal” to provide fire education and outreach, highlighting “the uses of beneficial fire, management of risks and impacts, and the diversity of public benefits” – to effectively educate the public on the benefits and support for using beneficial fire. The University of California Cooperative Extension and its cooperators will continue to manage and update the California Prescribed Burn Association website, which offers “communications tools and resources” for association heads. CARB will also enhance its existing Prescribed Fire Information Reporting System.
  • Entities and cooperatives including the California and Nevada Smoke and Air Committee will invest in “development of weather and smoke prediction technology,” to enable the “longer burn windows” necessitated by larger and more complex prescribed fires. CAL FIRE, the U.S. Forestry Service and other entities will create a publicly available treatment tracking database that will include information on beneficial fires around the state. By 2023, CARB will improve the Prescribed Fire Information Reporting System, which it manages, “to improve data collection and ease-of-use by local air districts and fire practitioners.” Spatial data and links to CAL FIRE’s prescribed fire permit system will be among the improvements. State and federal entities will also work to expand the California Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program, developing an “interagency-managed wildfire monitoring protocol and infrastructure; and bringing remote sensing and other technological advancements to bear on wildfires.”
  • The plan also highlights state Assembly Bill 642, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in September. Among its aims, generally, is to help drive an increase in “cultural burning” activity, which could potentially preempt wildfires – and, to achieve that, to require CAL FIRE to develop an automated system for issuing burn permits.
Theo Douglas is Assistant Managing Editor of Industry Insider — California.