Re: Request for Information on Technology Roadmap To Increase Wildfire Firefighting Capabilities (Federal Register Number 2025-18121)
The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that works to advance science and expertise within the public curiosity. FAS has established itself as an influential convener, community builder, and thought chief on wildfire points.
Thank you for the chance to supply enter to tell the Technology Roadmap To Increase Wildfire Firefighting Capabilities. We will focus this touch upon the next components that we expect must be emphasised within the growth of the roadmap:
- Leveraging the prevailing physique of labor on wildfire expertise wants and alternatives;
- Balancing investments in expertise for suppression with investments in expertise for threat discount;
- Innovating to guard wildland firefighters from the well being impacts of wildfire smoke;
- Providing substantive alternatives for finish customers of expertise to provide iterative enter;
- Ensuring that staff and first responders could make the most effective use of accessible knowledge, together with federal knowledge, by prioritizing knowledge standardization and interoperability;
- Addressing administrative limitations to expertise adoption.
More details about every of those components is supplied beneath.
Leveraging the prevailing physique of labor on wildfire expertise wants and alternatives
The present wildfire administration system is insufficient within the face of more and more extreme and damaging wildfires. Change is urgently wanted. Acknowledging this want was the impetus behind the consensus-building work of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission in addition to substantial legislative proposals which have emerged since, together with the S. 1462, the Fix Our Forests Act (which FAS endorsed). In creating the roadmap, we encourage you to overview the substantial physique of labor developed within the final a number of years that gives evidence-based suggestions for bettering using expertise in constructing wildfire resilience at varied ranges of presidency. The roadmap ought to clearly articulate the way it will construct on prior federal efforts. Examples of prior work embrace:
- ON FIRE: The Report of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission (2023). Chapter 6, which focuses on integrating trendy science and expertise, is especially related and consists of suggestions associated to supporting decision-making and accelerating expertise.
- Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Aerial Equipment Strategy Report (2023). Among different issues, this report highlights “the need to develop an overarching, forward-looking aviation strategy that drives procurement…the need to invest in both technology and people to build an aviation fleet that meets long-term demand; and the need to take an inclusive approach to the range of functions aerial resources can serve and the range of entities that must be included in development of a truly national–rather than federal—aviation strategy” and discusses particular mechanisms for attaining these ends.
- President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Report to the President on Modernizing Wildland Firefighting to Protect Our Firefighters (2023). This report provided short- and long-term suggestions for investments to make sure that firefighters are ready for the way forward for wildfires.
Balancing investments in expertise for suppression with investments in expertise for threat discount
Wildfire suppression is crucial for shielding individuals, property, and livelihoods. But with wildfire suppression prices ballooning, suppression should be environment friendly, focused, and used solely the place wanted. Federal businesses ought to prioritize deploying suppression assets the place hearth presents an imminent hazard to individuals, property, and livelihoods, comparable to ignitions within the wildland city interface (WUI). Thankfully, lots of the instruments wanted for good suppression (e.g., AI-powered ignition detection, satellite-enabled wildfire monitoring) exist already right this moment. The secret’s to scale and deploy these instruments successfully. Support for analysis, predictive modeling, and real-time hearth knowledge and knowledge can be wanted to allow exact, well timed wildfire response and suppression.
At the identical time, we should acknowledge that suppression is dear and may even be counterproductive—over-suppression right this moment can make fires worse tomorrow. Letting wildfires burn in a accountable and managed method the place these fires current restricted threat, comparable to deep inside undeveloped forested space, is a commonsense use of assets and can construct long-term wildfire resilience.
Therefore, the roadmap ought to present a transparent imaginative and prescient for a way the federal workforce in addition to subnational entities can be well-equipped to proceed crucial threat discount work along with wildfire response. Federal businesses have contributed to a buildup of hazardous wildfire fuels on our panorama by prioritizing suppression for almost a century—creating dangers of catastrophic megafires that even the most effective instruments wrestle to suppress. To handle this systemic downside, we should spend money on preparedness and resilience alongside suppression. Proactive threat administration is fiscally accountable; there’s a seven-dollar return on funding for each greenback spent on gas therapies and forest administration informed by hearth analysis. Investments in expertise can assist secure, extra focused prescribed burns and allow prioritization of threat discount actions that may maximize advantages to ecosystems, recreation areas, and water provides along with lowering the chance of catastrophic wildfire.
Innovating to guard wildland firefighters from well being impacts of wildfire smoke
Exposure to PM2.5, a significant element of wildfire smoke, has been related to brief and long run health impacts on wildland firefighters. We must do more to protect our wildland firefighters from these well being impacts. Specifically, the federal authorities ought to develop or procure private protecting tools (PPE) that’s particularly designed for the distinctive hazards and calls for of wildland firefighting. In addition to making sure adequate PPE, the federal authorities ought to work to raised perceive the dangers posed by long-term publicity to wildfire smoke, talk these dangers, and defend these working alongside wildfire within the constructed and pure environments. Additional actions that the federal authorities ought to take to guard wildland firefighters, mentioned in additional element in a recent FAS publication, embrace finding out the long-term impacts of wildland firefighting on human well being in addition to creating applied sciences, ways, and practices that cut back the period of time that wildland firefighters spend on the highest ranges of wildfire smoke publicity.
Providing substantive alternatives for finish customers of expertise to provide iterative enter
Creating alternatives for land managers and firefighters to supply iterative suggestions on the event of instruments and applied sciences can be sure that instruments and applied sciences developed on the federal degree are as helpful as potential for firefighters, land managers, and others at state and native ranges, leading to a extra practical and cost-effective firefighting ecosystem. For digital merchandise, shifting in direction of a product model slightly than undertaking administration mannequin can assist iterative consumer enter. Jennifer Pahlka, a Senior Fellow with FAS, has written extensively about this product mannequin (which she calls “the art of deciding what to do”) and how one can deploy it in authorities. Applying product administration funding mechanisms and approaches in authorities can result in more functional digital products delivered more quickly. Resourcing, together with skilled consumer expertise specialists, are key to efficiently deploying the product administration mannequin.
Ensuring that staff and first responders could make the most effective use of accessible knowledge, together with federal knowledge, by prioritizing knowledge standardization and interoperability
We concur with OSTP that “establishing data standardization and interoperability requirements to facilitate seamless data-sharing, and tools that will improve situational awareness for Federal, State, local, tribal, and territorial governments and private stakeholders” must be a excessive precedence for the federal authorities. Close coordination with different rising federal efforts to this finish, together with actions undertaken by the Wildland Fire Intelligence Center proposed in S. 1462, must be a precedence to stop duplication of effort at varied ranges of presidency. Establishing knowledge requirements and interoperability necessities may even assist more practical growth and deployment of synthetic intelligence instruments for suppression, threat discount, and restoration.
Coordinated knowledge programs, improved knowledge interoperability, and enhanced knowledge accessibility can assist state and native decision-makers profit from current info and facilitate growth of efficient expertise. Data managers ought to search to combine state and native knowledge and must be accessible to non-federal companions. When working with Tribes, care must be taken to make sure knowledge sovereignty and confidentiality the place requested.
Addressing administrative limitations to expertise adoption
Per the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission’s advice 117, businesses ought to work with Congress to make sure that “procurement and contracting…allow for more flexible partnerships with private industry and non-governmental partners.” See advice 117 of the Commission report for more information about particular mechanisms. As one instance, Congress may present related federal hearth businesses with Other Transaction Authority (OTA) already granted to the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA). Agencies with OTA authority can enter into transactions aside from procurement contracts, grants, or cooperative agreements, which means they don’t must adjust to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). As FAS employees have mentioned in prior publications, OTA authorities should be leveraged “to its full statutory extent” by relevant agencies so as to have maximum benefits for expertise acquisition.,
Additionally, because the Environmental Policy Innovation Center famous in a 2024 report on adopting innovation within the U.S. Forest Service, it’s also essential for federal authorities entities to develop “well-known entry points.” Having a delegated level of contact on the related company and a transparent path to working with the federal government will assist expertise suppliers in bringing their improvements to the general public sector. It may assist state and native governments in contacting related stakeholders within the federal authorities to coordinate on expertise tasks.