Wildfire Science & Technology Commons Opens to the Public to Unite and Accelerate Wildfire Solutions

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A team of University of California San Diego researchers has deployed a groundbreaking new platform to advance science and technology that addresses wildland fire challenges in an era of more frequent and devastating megafires.

The Wildfire Science & Technology Commons is a hub for data, models, computing resources, and expertise to enable scientists and technology innovators to collaborate with each other and work with practitioners to move theoretical ideas and experimental workflows into impactful, scalable real-world solutions. With support from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Wildfire Commons has been under development since 2024 by a team from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), part of the School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences (SCIDS) at UC San Diego. On July 31st at 10am PDT, the team will host a live online event to introduce the Wildfire Commons and present its features and capabilities in detail.

The Wildfire Commons advances firetech from research into production by connecting a community of experts and creating partnerships, data standards and innovation pathways centered around open data, cutting-edge science and AI. The Wildfire Commons is an initiative of the Proactive Wildfire & Environmental Sustainability Solutions (ProWESS) Center — a collaboration between UC San Diego’s Societal Computing and Innovation Lab (SCIL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

A Three-Part Commons

The Wildfire Commons consists of three main components: a Community Marketplace to discover data, models and services; an Expert Network Tool to bring together the cross-sector wildland fire community; and the FireForge Platform to facilitate development of new innovations and integrated solutions on cloud resources.

The Community Marketplace brings together diverse datasets, models and services all made accessible to the Commons community. These resources are organized with robust tagging and standardized vocabularies for discoverability, and will also include usage requirements, recognition criteria, and best practices in technical, legal, licensing and data agreements to help transition research workflows into practical applications.

The Expert Network Tool is the primary way for members to join and participate as a part of the Wildfire Commons community. Members can share their areas of expertise, discover new innovation opportunities and connect to other members with shared interests.

The FireForge Platform is the central collaborative workspace within the Wildfire Commons — a data and model discovery interface coupled to a cloud-based sandbox for designing workflows and prototyping new technologies and solutions. It provides shared Collaboration Studios for users to explore data, models and tools. FireForge is designed on SCIL's National Data Platform to reduce bottlenecks in innovation due to slow access to data and lack of available computing power.

These three parts of the Wildfire Commons work together to advance wildland fire technology by offering structured access to resources, connecting innovators and practitioners, and facilitating collaboration through an intuitive, efficient and integrated platform.

Benefits to Members

Members of the Wildfire Commons span the wildland fire community, from academic researchers and industry technologists to frontline practitioners and members of state and federal agencies. Partnership and information sharing between fields and disciplines will better align efforts to build and employ technology that leverages the best available data and science.

All members will have access to open datasets on fire behavior, weather, vegetation, historical patterns and other factors, as well as tools and services for modeling, AI and visualization. Housed in highly curated catalogs, these resources can be thoroughly searched and filtered for use in specific applications.

The Commons' Expert Network Tool is similarly catalogued, allowing for searchability by personal expertise and experience in project domains. Individual members can list their projects and make corresponding resources available at different levels of discoverability, as well as create personal curated catalogs of resources in one location using the FireForge Platform.

Members are also encouraged to create pathfinder projects to showcase and multiply the impact of existing efforts that leverage open data and open science for wildland fire solutions. The Wildfire Commons' first set of pathfinder projects include partners from the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative, WUI Data Commons, Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority and the Earth Fire Alliance.

To drive the initial technical capabilities, the Wildfire Commons consulted with a large national network of researchers and technologists working on 4D fuel, fire and smoke modeling. This case-study user community already utilizes the Commons to collaborate and share data, tools and code, actively developing new approaches to improve fuel characterization at large spatial extents and fine spatial scales — all to enhance the representation of fire in modeling and forecasting.

"This complex case study utilizes the Wildfire Commons in full capacity while also developing important datasets and models to enable diverse firetech innovation in the future — from land treatments to community planning," says SCIL Director Ilkay Altintas. "This work shows the importance of our Commons approach, and will pave the way for AI-ready datasets and immersive data visualizations that catalyze new modes of training, decision making, and public communication related to wildland fire."

A Robust Slate of Community Events

In its effort to create national-scale collaboration and innovation in wildland fire, the Wildfire Commons has already activated several partnerships and hosted events to facilitate the exchange of ideas, information and best practices in fire science and technology.

A recent webinar with the Western Fire and Forest Resilience Collaborative identified the knowledge gaps and scientific needs of agencies involved in wildland resilience and land management. The event specifically recognized the need for new methods of quantifying wildfire effects and the impact of prescribed burns, as well as new frameworks to extrapolate scientific findings and scale proactive measures across wildland environments.

With the actuarial consultant firm Milliman and the associated WUI Data Commons project, the Wildfire Commons looked at wildfire through the lens of the insurance industry in order to bridge the gap between mitigation efforts and models used by insurers to determine fire risk. Improvements to the alignment and availability of wildfire data can help stabilize homeowners insurance markets in the face of rapidly changing conditions.

And a recent webinar with the Earth Fire Alliance introduced its newly-launched FireSat program, a satellite constellation designed specifically for wildfire detection and characterization. With the ability to monitor global wildfire activity at unprecedented speed and resolution, the technology promises a major shift in integrating data into products such as fire perimeter maps, hotspot identification and scientific modeling.

More wildfire partnerships and public webinars are forthcoming, starting with the Wildfire Commons online launch event on July 31st at 10am PDT. For more information, register for the event or visit wildfirecommons.org.

Learn more about research and education at UC San Diego in: Artificial Intelligence