S492 - Long Term Fire Risk Assessment

Hours: 70-100 hrs (includes pre-course work and 36 hours of classroom)

Course Description:

This course is designed specifically for those individuals wishing to make long term fire risk assessments and/or continue training to serve as a fire behavior analyst (FBAN) or long term fire analyst (LTAN) on long-duration and complex wildland fires. Those already qualified at the FBAN level will find the instruction valuable in predicting wildland fire behavior and spread potential for medium and long time periods.

Course units will explore modeling uncertainty, prescribed fire planning, fire effects models, and climatology to predict potential fire behavior and growth. There will be some lecture, but the majority of the course consists of exercises focusing on acquiring data, analyzing the data, applying it to the situation, and preparation of a written summary to display the information.

S-492 is a pass/fail course based on scores received in pre-course work, quizzes, and the final examination. The student must have a cumulative score of 70% or higher to pass.

Objectives:

To provide students with a working knowledge of the Long Term Fire Risk Assessment process so that given defined issues of risk, the student can select the appropriate tools, develop data sets, run assessment tools, interpret outputs and understand the philosophy, limitations and assumptions of the various models.

During the course, students will:

• Learn analytical techniques to evaluate long term risks associated with fire movement or undesired smoke impacts.
• Acquire, manipulate, and interpret historical weather data and use results with forecasts to specify expected weather by percentile class, fire ending events, and seasonal severity.
• Apply fire modeling and decision analysis techniques to evaluate, display, and interpret the risks and uncertainty that a fire will reach a point of concern or cause critical smoke events.
• Be able to use the Rare Event Risk Assessment Process (RERAP), Fire Family Plus and Greenness Imagery for long range planning.
• Discuss the application of the Long Term Assessment process to the duties of FBAN and LTAN.

Target Group:

• Long term fire analysts (LTAN) candidates and current fire behavior analysts (FBAN) desiring qualification as long term fire analysts (LTAN).
• Individuals desiring to acquire long term fire risk assessment knowledge for use in wildland fire use and prescribed fire planning at unit levels.
• Individuals intending to use RERAP as a technical specialist.

Minimum Instructor Qualifications:

Lead Instructor - qualified as long term fire analyst (LTAN) with experience on Fire Use teams AND in completing geographic area level risk assessments OR is a unit leader in the S-590 course.

Unit Leader - qualified as long term fire analyst (LTAN) or fire behavior analyst (FBAN).

Lesson Instructor - qualified as LTAN or FBAN, or LTAN or FBAN trainee, or successful S-492 student who has applied course skills while assigned under a qualified LTAN or FBAN in planning or incident assignments.

Also see NWCG Instructor Qualifications at the beginning of this Guide.

Prerequisites:

• Advanced Wildland Fire Behavior Calculations (S-490).
• Intermediate NFDRS (S-491) recommended but not required.
• Proficiency in the use of the Fire Behavior Prediction System (including BEHAVE Plus).
• Proficiency in obtaining and manipulating weather data with FireFamily Plus.
• Proficiency in file management and directory structures in the current Windows operating systems.

Acceptance into the course will depend on the nominee’s successful completion of approximately 15-20 hours of web-based pre-qualifying course work. Upon notification of final acceptance into the course, students will be required to complete 10 course units on the Internet, requiring an additional 20-40 hours of study.

Course Hardware Requirements

Selected students will be required to bring a notebook PC to the course with the following minimum specifications:

• IBM compatible notebook (laptop)
• Windows 95 or later operating system
• 800 x 600 pixel Active Matrix color display
• Minimum 300 Mhz Pentium
• Minimum of 128 megabytes RAM for Windows 95/98/me, 256 megabytes RAM for Windows NT/2000/XP
• 500 megabytes of hard drive free space
• Current virus software installed and running in background
• External mouse
• 3½" floppy drive
• CD ROM drive or USB port
• Industry standard web browser

Offer Level:
Geographic area, equivalent in detail and complexity to a 400 level university course. Nominees should be prepared to schedule time to study, practice on exercises, and meet deadlines just as they would in a university course.

This Course Description is verbatim from the NWCG Field Manager's Course Guide (156 page PDF: Adobe Acrobat Reader required) and accurate as of 9-25-2008.

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