Citation

Hu Y, Ai HH, Odman MT, Vaidyanathan A, Russell AG. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019; 16(11): e16111981.

Affiliation

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA. ted.russell@gatech.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph16111981

PMID

31167440

Abstract

We have developed the Southern Integrated Prescribed Fire Information System (SIPFIS) to disseminate prescribed fire information, including daily forecasts of potential air quality impacts for southeastern USA. SIPFIS is a Web-based Geographic Information Systems (WebGIS) assisted online analysis tool that provides easy access to air quality and fire-related data products, and it facilitates visual analysis of exposure to smoke from prescribed fires. We have demonstrated that the information that SIPFIS provides can help users to accomplish several fire management activities, especially those related to assessing environmental and health impacts associated with prescribed burning. SIPFIS can easily and conveniently assist tasks such as checking residential community-level smoke exposures for personal use, pre-screening for fire-related exceptional events that could lead to air quality exceedances, supporting analysis for air quality forecasts, and the evaluation of prescribed burning operations, among others. The SIPFIS database is currently expanding to include social vulnerability and human health information, and this will evolve to bring more enhanced interactive functions in the future.

Language: en

Keywords

DDM-3D; air quality; burn acreage; exposure; forecasting; source impact; wildland fire