Good question James.
I turned on the SILVIS WUI layer in IFTDSS (screenshot attached) but do not see the area you outlined in your screenshot, so it looks like we only have a portion of that data.
I moved this to the forum so other members of our team can answer this and speak to the potential for IFTDSS to use the same WUI and structure data layers as WFDSS.
In the meantime as work-around you could upload a shape to Map Studio. Thats not a good as having the WUI layer already there, but it would be a quick shortcut while we look into this issue further.
Hi James,
WUI is a tricky geospatial layer to source because, despite there being a Congressional Register definition for it, everyone seems to want to develop their own layer to use for planning, whether at the local, regional, or national scale. The Congressional Register definition is based on housing density and presence of "wildland vegetation." The SILVIS WUI layer that IFTDSS Support Desk suggests above is available in IFTDSS; it is based on a method using the congressional register definitions, developed by the university of Wisconsin Spatial Analysis for Conservation and Sustainability (SILVIS) lab: http://silvis.forest.wisc.edu/research/houses-and-wui . The USFS Northern Research Station funded that research, and the data are commonly used for national analyses in the Forest Service.
Other datasets we are investigating for inclusion in IFTSS include the "Rural Developed Population Areas", or RDPA, data developed by Jessica Haas and used in GTR-315, "A Wildfire Risk Assessment Framework for Land and Resource Management". Jessica's work is described really well here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/44720 . It is also most suitable for national and regional analysis.
Once we get to the local scale, things start to get murkier and there isn't a single consolidated dataset for WUI that I'm aware of. You mention a "T-drive reference layer". Is this a local dataset for your forest?Can you give me some more details on that? If there is a consistency of approaches across the Forest Service, we might be able to pull some of these data together for inclusion in IFTDSS.
Andrew
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for looking into this. Can't say I'm surprised about the "murky" water associated with WUI. A lot of backroom hand shakes. . . I've been looking into some of the local fire and state departments data. . . Most of the links within the CWPP document are broken or no longer there. Waiting on some calls.
The back story behind this is, the district is petitioning for supplemental Regional fuels dollars. This is a quick project in conversation, but needs a little more thought to implement. Thanks for looking into this.
As for the "T" drive, it is the directory location for the Citrix; National FS database. Each forest has a reference layer folder containing NEPA associated spatial data.
Thanks!
James
James Klungness-Mshoi