USDA · USDA-162 · record R1460

Fire Containment Suitability (FireCON)

Department of Agriculture · Natural Resources and Environment

Overview

Development stage: PilotSource: b) Pilot – The use case has been deployed in a limited test or pilot capacity.
High-impact designation: Not high-impactSource: c) Not high-impact
Impact justification: Not reported
Start date: 2025-06-23 (day precision)Source: 6/23/2025
Withheld from public reporting: Not reported

Mission

Topic area: Emergency Management
Operational functions: Summarization Derived by keyword rules; see methodology

Problem the AI is intended to solve

Identification and assessment of appropriate wildland fire containment locations to improve the quality of information available to incident command teams.

Expected benefits

Improved efficiency and effectiveness of fire containment strategies.

System outputs

Outputs daily mapped probabilities summarizing weather, wind, topography, fuels, potential fire behavior, and other variables showing the suitability of wildfire containment for an area around an active wildfire and reduce uncertainty during wildfire management.

Technology

AI classification: Classical / predictive MLSource: Classical/Predictive Machine Learning: Models trained on data to make predictions or classifications based on identified patterns or relatio…
System name(s): Not reported
Custom-developed code: Yes
Public source code: Not reported

Sourcing

How it was built: Developed in-houseSource: b) Developed in-house
Vendor (as reported): Not reported
Vendors (standardized): None on the standard list

A vendor is the supplier named by the agency. It does not identify the underlying model or AI technology.

Data and privacy

Involves PII: No
Privacy Impact Assessment: Not reported
Authorization to Operate: No
Demographic features: k) None of the above
Training and evaluation data: Data includes the annual west-wide Potential Control Location Suitability model outputs from 2020-2023, Topofire daily soil moisture and soil moisture anomaly, hourly weather data from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), satellite (VIIRS) 12-hour fire detections from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Infrared Operations (NIROPS) high-resolution daily fire progression tracking from 2020-2023.
Federal Data Catalog: Not reported

Governance

0 of 8 minimum-practice questions answered. A blank answer means the agency reported nothing; it does not mean the practice is absent.

Pre-deployment testingNo answer reported

AI impact assessmentNo answer reported

Independent reviewNo answer reported

Ongoing monitoringNo answer reported

Operator trainingNo answer reported

Fail-safeNo answer reported

Appeal processNo answer reported

User and public consultationNo answer reported

Potential impacts and how they were identified

Not reported