National Approach to Wildfire Data and Technology: Operations-Centered Innovation Pathways
Somewhere mid-way down the mountainous scrapheap of failed startups, one can find the dented chassis of a countertop juicer named the Juicero. The device ranged in cost from $400 - $700, was only compatible with proprietary QR-coded juice packs, and was ultimately superfluous as the packs could be snipped open for hand squeezing. It is a classic example of an over-designed solution for a non-existent problem that no one asked for.
To avoid Juicero debacles, the Wildland Fire Intelligence Center (WFIC) needs to establish an operations-centered innovation cycle from day one. Data and technology initiatives must be rooted in the explicit needs of the people who use those systems to discover new solutions and improve wildfire resiliency.
Not doing so will waste time and resources developing innovations that answer the wrong questions, fail when deployed, or simply don’t get adopted at all. Beyond that, the WFIC faces a particular challenge as an integrator of operations housed in other institutions. They must evaluate, adapt, and coordinate needs, resources, and capabilities from across those institutions to deliver on the opportunity in front of them.
With committed leadership dedicated to personnel-identified solutions, the WFIC can spin up a sustainable cycle of solutioneering that focuses the power of nation-scale data for acutely scoped needs.
Making the Juice(ro) Worth the Squeeze: Three T's for an Operations-Centered Innovation Pathway
To effectively modernize wildfire management, forest management, frontline operations, analytics, and research must take precedence when setting national priorities for data and technology. In a high stakes, capacity-constrained ecosystem, every decision – from which data to collect to which products to procure – must be tethered to end user needs: translating investments into action and forging a culture of trust.
The cycle relies on three critical structures with analogs from the National Weather Service (NWS) as reference points.
Operations-centered does not mean monodirectional; while practitioners push, leaders must pull. Executives in the WFIC and partner agencies need to step into the fray to ensure that money, clout, and time are allocated to projects with real promise.
For example, for large wildfire incidents, some experts envision the need for dedicated “Intelligence Officers” within Incident Management Teams (IMTs) to operationalize data for real-time decision-making. Expanding that logic to detail similar roles for prevention, detection, preparedness, mitigation, and recovery will improve the overall coordination of our response apparatus and save money, communities, natural places, and lives.
As they reach down their organizational chains, executives must also engage with the private sector, research institutions, and NGOs. The agility, ingenuity, and alternative resourcing these groups bring to the table pairs with practitioner expertise to drive entirely new lines of inquiry for impact. Beyond direct engagement, the WFIC needs to create an open-data ecosystem that enables external innovators to access and shape that data into value-added services. Open data and the interoperability that supports its use will be covered in more detail in the two blogs that follow.
Resounding Calls for the Operations-Centered Innovation Pathway
The calls for an operations-centered innovation pathway are clarion from experts across the board. Across our conversations, this was the single most cited priority. And the rankings weren’t particularly close.
Wildland fire is an inherently place-based issue. Individual geographies ignite, burn, and recover differently. Community preparedness varies widely. Response resources are distributed differentially. While centralizing data and technology (including their governance and administration) has significant upside, doing so without prioritizing on-the-ground knowledge and needs will backfire. Testing, evaluation, and customization must prioritize regional reality. This work gets done on the ground. Their needs should steer the actions of supporting organizations like the WFIC.
National Approach to Wildfire Data and Technology: Effective Governance in an Open Wildfire Data Ecosystem
Introduction: A Crisis in Need of Coordination
Wildland fire management is at a critical turning point, driven by an escalating wildfire crisis, rapid advances in data and technology, and historic federal policy change proposals. Until now, the effectiveness of our wildfire response has been hampered by fragmented data systems scattered across agencies. This fragmentation is a system-wide translation failure that throttles the impact of technology in mitigating, managing and recovering from wildfires. We lack an entity dedicated to integrating existing data and expertise into a coherent sum, greater than its parts.
National Approaches to Wildfire Data and Technology
The proposed Wildland Fire Intelligence Center (WFIC) can create that essential integration layer to empower a modernized national strategy. Focusing on integration instead of reinvention is the difference between throwing out decades of good work to start from scratch, or fixing the broken parts of that system to help good work shine. The second is smarter, cheaper, and more politically feasible. The effort, money, and political capital saved in this approach can then be dedicated to identifying the remaining gaps or irreparable breaks and integrating new technologies to fill them.
By focusing on synthesizing diverse model outputs and standardizing observations into actionable intelligence, the WFIC addresses the translation failures of the current system. If successful, it would provide the delivery architecture necessary to turn scattered scientific data into a unified operational reality, addressing the crisis without getting snagged on the bureaucratic friction of organizational overlap.
Recent executive action and legislative proposals aimed at modernizing the wildland fire system—including the Fix our Forest Act (S. 1462 / H.R. 471), which would create the WFIC in statute—present real opportunities to shift toward a unified, technology-enabled, and data-centric strategy. However, poorly implemented changes within this already complex multi-jurisdictional ecosystem carry significant risks. Without diligent planning, design, and user input mechanisms from the start, as well as adaptability to address an ever-shifting technology and political landscape, these initiatives could produce an inverse effect. They risk failing to solve existing issues, creating new inefficiencies, or simply recreating old problems at a high cost to taxpayers and fire-prone communities.
“Priority Wins”
To inform an effective near-term transformation, the Environmental Policy Innovation Center(EPIC) and the Climate and Wildfire Institute(CWI) partnered to explore the pitfalls and possibilities of a national approach to wildfire intelligence. By synthesizing existing research and input from dozens of tech developers, researchers, and practitioners, we’ve identified four “Priority Wins” essential for near-term success.
The Roadmap: Four Priority Wins
The emerging strategy for national wildfire data and technology requires a foundational shift in how the overall system is managed.
Effective governance is the foundation of this strategy. This post outlines fundamental governance recommendations needed to begin moving beyond data and tech silos in the next 18-24 months. In the coming weeks, we will dive deeper into each operational priority, or “Win,” illustrating how a well-governed, open wildfire intelligence ecosystem empowers researchers, protects firefighters, and ultimately builds more resilient communities.
Effective Governance in an Open Data Ecosystem
Wildland fire management is transforming as the scale and complexity of the wildfire crisis increases. However, in an ecosystem this complex, with stakes this high, change comes with significant risk. Thoughtful, focused governance that delivers on the needs and knowledge of expert practitioners, researchers, and other end-users is the best way forward.
Drawing from interviews, existing research, and a case study on the National Weather Service (NWS) produced as our model comparison, we’ve identified the following achievable governance priorities for the first 18-24 months of a national wildfire intelligence system:
First Priorities for Implementation
A WFIC Executive Director and an Interagency Board, will be tasked with establishing the Center "as soon as practicable" and creating core data registries within 90 days.
This accelerated timeline creates a "sprint" scenario. Because key mandates are triggered immediately—likely before dedicated funding is fully appropriated—officials must stand up the new entity under existing capacity constraints. To set the WFIC on a successful path in this 90-day window, we suggest prioritizing:
A constituted governing board with a signed charter establishing its integration authority;
Executed MOUs with at least two federal partners, and one pilot state in negotiation;
Embedded liaisons deployed at NIFC and one pilot Geographic Area Coordination Center (GACC);
A functioning data integration environment aggregating initial feeds (e.g., building on efforts like NERIS); and
Prototype intelligence products incorporating data already in production for end users.
Success in this window requires moving beyond "rules of the road" to an operational governance model that creates seamless pathways for data from day one.
Looking Ahead
The next post in our series will shift from structure to function, focusing on the end user and key considerations for an ‘operations-to-research-to-operations’ pathway. We will explore how to develop and mainstream new technology based on real needs identified by those who need it the most. Stay tuned for more!