Abstract
This paper describes a new dataset mined from the public archive (1999–2014) of the U.S. National Incident Management System/Incident Command System Incident Status Summary Form (a total of 124,411 reports for 25,083 incidents, including 24,608 wildfires). This system captures detailed information on incident management costs, personnel, hazard characteristics, values at risk, fatalities, and structural damage. Most (98.5%) of the reports are fire-related, followed in decreasing order by other, hurricane, hazardous materials, flood, tornado, search and rescue, civil unrest, and winter storms. The archive, although publicly available, has been difficult to use due to multiple record formats, inconsistent free-form fields, and no bridge between individual reports and high-level incident analysis. Here, we describe this improved dataset and the open, reproducible methods used, including merging records across three versions of the system, cleaning and aligning with the current system, smoothing values across reports, and supporting incident-level analysis. This integrated record offers the opportunity to explore the daily progression of the most costly, damaging, and deadly events in the U.S., particularly for wildfires.
Highlights
Background & SummaryThere has been a steady rise in the occurrence of billion-dollar disasters in the United States (U.S.) since the 1980s, with the past three years (2016–2018) each setting historic highs
If the number of Acres is downgraded on a subsequent report, we reduce the number of acres on previous reports given that a fire never truly gets smaller, this is likely over-estimation at the time the report was filed
The cleaned and merged Incident Status Summary table is used to create the Wildfire Incident Summary table. This table extracts key elements from the individual sitreps to describe the fire and support high-level analysis across wildfire events. This information includes the cause, discovery date information, final acres, final estimated costs, injuries, fatalities, if evacuations recorded at any point during the fire, and the point of origin for the fire
Summary
There has been a steady rise in the occurrence of billion-dollar disasters in the United States (U.S.) since the 1980s, with the past three years (2016–2018) each setting historic highs. Within just the past few decades, the area burned by wildfires in the western U.S has increased at least threefold[5,6,7,8], with a strong climate change influence for forest systems[9] This is a critical moment to develop new methods and data sources to help understand the interrelationships between the physical and environmental characteristics of a hazard, the effectiveness of incident management strategies, and the societal impacts of these large-scale events. The ICS-209 captures the best in-the-moment observations about the current and forecasted status of the hazard, current resources assigned, estimated costs, current and forecasted critical needs, and the societal and natural values currently at threat These status summaries are required for each operational period of an incident response or when significant events warrant a status update. We conclude by identifying the key opportunities for use of this dataset and how this open-source solution could be extended in the future
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