Learn more about the data sources used to calculate Fire Factors.
The data behind Fire Factor
The First Street Foundation Wildfire Model uses U.S. Federal Government open data as a basis with additional data from a variety of sources to determine property-level wildfire risk assessments that account for changing environmental conditions to allow individuals, communities, businesses, and governments to understand and prepare for their wildfire risk.
Types of data sources used
Fire Factor® takes a variety of public data sources into consideration, including a number of open government datasets.
Fire hazard data sources
- U.S. Forest Service (USFS) LANDFIRE fuels dataset at 30m horizontal resolution
- Multi-agency Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) fire impact mosaics
- National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) wildfire information
- California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) wildfire information
- Global Forest Watch (GFW) remotely sensed wildfire information
- Fire Occurrence Database (FOD) wildfire ignition locations developed by the USFS
Fire behavior models
- Eulerian Level Set Model of Fire Spread (ELMFIRE) open-source fire behavior model
Climate data sources General data sources
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis (RMTA) surface weather conditions for CONUS
- IPCC CMIP5 Global Climate Models (GCMs) using Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5
- MACAv2 - Daily downscaled CMIP5 RCP4.5 model projections (2046-2055)
General data sources
- Topographic slope and aspect from the United States Geological Survey National Elevation Dataset (USGS NED)
- Property-level parcel data is sourced from county-level property assessor records which are collected and standardized by Lightbox, a 3rd party data provider
The First Street Foundation National Wildfire Model is a first-of-its-kind, nationwide, behavioral wildfire model that shows a specific location’s probabilistic risk of wildfire based on the vegetation, topography, and fire weather in the surrounding area. It builds off of decades of peer-reviewed research and forecasts how wildfire risks will change over time due to changes in the environment. Use Risk Factor™ to find property-specific wildfire risk assessments for any U.S. address.
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