All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020

Abstract

This paper describes a dataset mined from the public archive (1999-2020) of the US National Incident Management System Incident Status Summary (ICS-209) forms (a total of 187,160 reports for 35,170 incidents, including 34,478 wildland fires). This system captures detailed daily/regular information on incident development and response, including social and economic impacts. Most (98.4%) reports are wildland fire-related, with other incident types including hurricane, hazardous materials, flood, tornado, search and rescue, civil unrest, and winter storms. The archive, although publicly available, has been difficult to use for research due to multiple record formats, inconsistent data entry, and no clean pathway from individual reports to high-level incident analysis. Here, we describe the open-source, reproducible methods used to produce a science-grade version of the data, including formal connections made to other published wildland fire data products. Among other applications, this integrated and spatially augmented dataset enables exploration of the daily progression of the most costly, damaging, and deadly environmental-hazard events in recent US history.

Fig. 1

Process Followed to Create the ICS-209-PLUS All-hazards and Wildfire Datasets.

Fig. 2

Perimeters of the 2018 California Camp Fire taken from MTBS (shown in red) and FIRED (shown in purple), and displayed with corresponding census tracts from the spatiotemporal linkage (shown in grey).

Fig. 3

Log-scaled (a) number of incidents by conterminous US (CONUS) county, (b) number of incidents by Alaska county, and (c) number of incidents by year from each of the historical releases of the ICS-209 reports. Grey color denotes counties with no associated incidents during the time-period. Incidents were assigned to a county based on the Point of Origin (POO) coordinates in the ICS-209-PLUS dataset.

Fig. 4

Spatial distribution of key variables for CONUS counties. Log-scaled (a) burned area (acres), (b) average maximum fire spread rate (acres/day), (c) projected incident management costs ($), (d) total assigned personnel × report, (e) total number of threatened structures, and (f) total destroyed structures. Spatial distributions for Alaska counties not shown here but can be calculated from the data product. Incidents were assigned to a county based on the Point of Origin (POO) coordinates in the ICS-209-PLUS.

Fig. 5

2017 Chetco Bar Fire case study. (a) Chetco Bar wildfire perimeter from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) denoted in black outline, ICS-209-PLUS Point of Origin (POO) denoted in black diamond, and the satellite-derived wildfire progression map clustered into 10-day burn periods (since ignition) from the MCD64A1 and linked through FIRED events. (b–i) selected key variables from the ICS-209-PLUS situation reports which outline resources and values at risk throughout the incident duration. The Chetco Bar Fire reports maximum growth 39 days from the discovery date coinciding with increases in resource allocation and values at risk.