Southern Integrated Prescribed Fire Information System
Prescribed Fire and Air Quality Information for the South
About SIPFIS Website
What is SIPFIS?
SIPFIS is the acronym for Southern Integrated Prescribed Fire Information System. SIPFIS merges prescribed fire and air quality data into a common analysis framework. One of its objectives is to create a unified prescribed fire database for the southern U.S. providing multi-year data for fire occurrence and characteristics. Currently, this objective is fulfilled by combining data from prescribed burn permits and open burn authorizations issued by state agencies with satellite detections of fires in the region. The information available through SIPFIS includes air quality observations from routine monitoring networks and air quality, burn and burn impact predictions from Georgia Tech’s HiRes-2 forecasting system.
What information is available on SIPFIS Website?
We developed a web-based application to provide access to the data and facilitate visual analyses. The data can be accessed and analyzed interactively through user-friendly tools and online visualizations. The current focus of the website is the impacts of prescribed fire smoke on air quality. The impacts on human health will be focused next. At present, the following data are available on the SIPFIS Website.
Air Quality Observations: Ozone and PM2.5 observations from the national air quality monitoring network (https://www.airnow.gov); nationally, from January 1, 2015 to present; updated daily.
Air Quality Predictions: Ozone and PM2.5 predictions from the Georgia Tech’s HiRes-2 forecasting system (https://forecast.ce.gatech.edu); Contiguous U.S., from January 1, 2015 to present; updated daily.
HMS Detections: Locations of satellite fire detections from the Hazard Mapping System Fire and Smoke Product (http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/land/hms.html); North America, from January 1, 2015 to present; updated daily.
Permits: Burn locations and areas from Florida’s open burn authorization records and Georgia’s burn permit records; Florida and Georgia, from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2016; updated annually.
Burn, Air Quality (with burns) and Burn Impact Predictions: Prescribed burn activity, air quality with burns and burn impact from the Georgia Tech’s HiRes-2 forecasting system (https://forecast.ce.gatech.edu); Southeastern U.S., from January 1, 2015 to April 30, 2015; January 1, 2016 to April 30 2016; and January 1, 2017 to present; updated daily.
Burn Impact on Social Vulnerability and Human Health: SVI weighted smoke exposure forecasts and forecasts of increased relative health rates due to smoke exposure, derived from the Georgia Tech's HiRes-2 forecasting system , from January 1, 2019 to present; updated daily.