Tracking the Unseen Perils of Wildfire
DG researchers team with EPA and U.S. Forest Service to craft a system for tracking smoke pollution's impact on air quality
By Karen Heyman
For the DGRC

Managing Wildfire Pollution Data
	• Distributed Voyager project • Distributed Voyager prototype • NEISGEI project

Most wildfire dangers are so obvious, they are apparent even just by looking at a picture.

With no other senses to direct our fears, unable to hear the overwhelming crackling or feel the choking smoke, we are still terrified by the sight of flaming, falling timbers. We are grateful, as we read our newspapers and watch our television sets, that we are safe, hundreds of miles from such horror.

But how truly safe are we? For what is far less obvious is the impact that particulates from a fire - combined with other pollutants - can have on air quality, even in communities safe from the flames themselves. "Wildfires are natural processes. You can't control their emissions by requiring a permit," says Brooke Hemming, a physical chemist with the Environmental Protection Agency, "The best you can do is to assess the potential risks and plan accordingly."

As part of a larger effort called NEISGEI (Networked Environmental Information System for Global Emissions Inventories, EPA is working under a Digital Government grant with researchers at Washington University in St. Louis to build a system that can better track pollution data from wildfires.

Various federal, state and local agencies have been collecting data on fires for that purpose for years. That's both the good news and the bad news, says researcher Stefan Falke a research assistant professor in the Environmental Engineering Sciences Program at Washington University. "All of these rich data sources are being collected by multiple organizations, like NASA, the EPA, and the Forest Service, but they're not easily integrated and integration is often required since no single data source tells the whole story by itself."

Falke and Hemming both cite the limitations of satellite imagery as an example of the lacunae. A two-dimensional satellite photograph shows how many acres a smoke plume covers, but there's no way to know where the plume is in vertical space. It could be hovering at ground level, interacting with existing pollutants, or thousands of meters above the surface in otherwise clear air. Worse, satellite pictures are generally taken only once a day.

Meanwhile, there are ground-level monitoring stations, which collect surface level air pollution and weather data many times a day, which could bring help bring extra dimensions to the satellite data.

The first challenge then is one familiar to many Digital Government researchers - the need to combine many heterogeneous data sets. To that end, Falke and his team are working on "wrappers" - software that will act as a bridge layer between pre-existing databases that are maintained by multiple organizations. This approach is especially advantageous in focused fields such as air quality, says Falke. Since similar terms and data formats reappear, the wrappers can eventually be used as templates for simplifying the process of linking to new datasets. "What we need are technologies that don't presently exist," says Hemming, "Stefan spotted that gap and is creating a way of integrating all kinds of data, making it truly useful for those of us doing air quality analysis and designing environmental policy."

Integration is vital. Falke knows that new solutions must fit within existing frameworks, "One of the key pieces of feedback we get from government agencies is: ÔWe're not looking to replace what we already have.' They've already made substantial investments, they need something to fit in with and extend their current operational systems."

Extension is where Falke's team may play a key role as they develop Web-based data analysis tools to add value to the existing data sets. "Stefan's next step is taking one kind of data and marrying it with closely relevant data," says Hemming. "You can take ground-level emissions inventory data, add monitoring data, which reports observed concentrations, combine it with remote sensing data, that give space-based images of the spatial extent of the pollutant plume and tie it all in with meteorological predictions. This allows you to do forecasting of downwind air quality."

One example of a prototype solution is called Distributed Voyager, which was primarily developed by Falke's colleague Rudolf Husar. It's a web-based tool that combines various multi-dimensional datasets into easily readable and browsable graphical formats. "It's designed to work as a component with other web applications and to become one of the tools that fire managers and air quality planners have available in their toolbox," Falke says, explaining that what they are seeking to create is a modular system where innovative tools like Distributed Voyager "plug" into existing and evolving government IT infrastructures.

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The hope is that the output of all this combined analysis can then be used as inputs in other analyses, such as predictive modeling. Ultimately, what should be created is a data analysis-modeling feedback loop, continuously improving the assessment of current danger and the ability to predict potential threats. The system ultimately may save both lives and property by helping to better predict fire danger conditions, and by alerting communities to their vulnerability to fire's less obvious, but also deadly, effect on air quality.

"We need people like them," says Hemming of Falke and other Digital Government researchers. "They have the flexibility to explore new things. The scary thing is that while contractors have to deliver what's specified in their contracts with the government, a researcher's ideas may not turn out to be feasible. But overall Digital Government is a real service to the agencies, because we don't have to contribute a large sum of money or much staff time, so there's only a small dent in our resources. So, it's a low risk-potentially high pay-off deal - and a wonderful idea. Thanks to whoever conceived of it!"