COLORADO—Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Matt Thompson, Bret Butler and Dan Jimenez recently partnered with Mickey Campbell and Phil Dennison from the University of Utah in developing a new tool to improve firefighter safety. The Safe Separation Distance Evaluator is an interactive, open-access Google Earth engine-based tool that helps identify and evaluate potential safety zones anywhere in the U.S.

Safety zones can mean life or death for wildland firefighters. Since 1994, the calculation of safety zones simply consisted of an area four times the flame length. Those calculations didn’t account for slope, vegetation height and wind—all factors that can quickly render a previously designated safety zone unsafe.

“Convective heating increases the heating of fuels ahead of the flame front. That increases the fire rate of spread, increases the depth of the flame front and increases the amount of energy that is being released. When it comes to safety zones, the result is much larger distances to be safe,” said Bret Butler.

The SSDE combines terrain slope and vegetation height data from LANDFIRE with user-defined burn conditions and wind speeds. It allows users to identify and draw potential safety zones on a map, then determine if the area provides a safe separation distance from surrounding vegetation. The combination of real-time conditions and cutting-edge geospatial data will allow users to rapidly assess SSD with new clarity and confidence.

The safety evaluator should be treated as the first step in identifying potential safety zones for firefighters. This tool is to be included in the training curriculum for fire personnel. An instructional video for using the interactive interface is available, and these safety zone guidelines are being incorporated into a user-friendly phone app that can be used anywhere on the landscape.

While SSDE is not currently intended to be a real-time decision-making tool for firefighters on the ground, this tool will be used by incident management teams and incorporated into incident action plans. Thanks to this partnership, the SSDE will change the way firefighters operate and increase their safety in the future. Read more in Science You Can Use (in 5 minutes).