Data collected by FTS stations help North American fire management agencies ensure public safety

FTS has been manufacturing remote automated weather stations primarily for forest fire management agencies for 30 years. For various reasons, including the changing global climate, wildfires are getting bigger, more destructive and more expensive. Wildfires kill wildlife, kill people and destroy communities, pollute the air and water, and the greenhouse gases they emit are wiping out much of what is being achieved to reduce emissions from fossil fuels to battle global warming. Billions of dollars are spent combatting wildfires every year. Effective, consistent and reliable detection of climate parameters is the key to preventing wildfires and managing the impact they have.

Our equipment resides for decades in solitary confinement generally in very remote areas (often at the tops of mountains or deep within a national forest), constantly measuring and recording weather data. Once per hour, this data is transmitted back to government agencies who will analyze and use it to make decisions critical to the safety of the public.

In the United States, FTS works closely with the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho. NIFC is the physical home to the National Interagency Coordination Center (NICC) and the National Multi-Agency Coordination group (NMAC) which is comprised of various federal agencies. The center’s mission is the complex interagency coordination of wildland firefighting resources for the country. One of the resources is the network of remote automated weather stations (RAWS), the vast majority of which are supplied by FTS.

The Remote Sensing Fire Weather Support Unit (RSFWSU) is a group within NIFC that deals with all aspects of the RAWS network, including maintaining an equipment depot of spare parts and refurbished equipment, maintaining a loaner pool of portable RAWS equipment, servicing and supporting RAWS and training RAWS technicians. They also set standards for RAWS components, maintenance schedules and data formats.

Data gathered by the RAWS network is used to calculate the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) index, a uniform, consistent nation-wide decision support system used by wildland fire agencies in the U.S. to assess current fire danger at local and national levels.