Monitoring British Columbia’s wildfire threats with ArcGIS Dashboards

July 13, 2020

David Hamilton

Esri Canada’s Public Safety Industry Manager, David Hamilton, looks at how the BC Wildfire Service is utilizing ArcGIS Dashboards to keep the community informed of potential fire threats.

My avid blog followers (you know you are) will recall my post from the summer of 2018, in which I talked about the loss of both my sister’s and my niece’s homes to the Alkali Lake wildfire in northern BC. In the days leading up to the loss of my sister’s home, I constantly monitored the BC Wildfire Service’s Interactive Wildfire Map out of concern for my family and to keep an eye on the rapidly changing situation. Shortly after that blog post, the BC Wildfire Service released their BC Wildfire Dashboard, which provides users intuitive and interactive data visualizations of location-based analytics. The application is a configuration of our ArcGIS Dashboard, which you have undoubtedly seen most recently to visualize COVID-19 data.

After seeing recent news that BC is experiencing lower than forecasted wildfires this season, I decided to check out the BC Wildfires Dashboard to find a total of 176 wildfires across the province, thus far. In comparison, BC had upwards of 289 wildfires on this date in 2017.

The great benefit of using dashboards is the ability provide different views of the data with ease. For example, I was curious to see how many of the 176 wildfires in BC had been caused by human error. By selecting “Suspected Cause” from the top left widget I was presented the data breakdown, and lo and behold 74.8 % of the wildfires this season were caused by humans (be smart out there, folks). I was also able to drill down into the data to display the attribute table of the layer along the bottom of the map.

As I think back to the summer of 2018, I was so eager to find information on the Alkali Wildfire, and the BC Wildfire Interactive Map quenched that thirst. The team continues to extend their dashboard by adding even more data visualizations, making it the province’s authoritative source for wildfire updates and data. Another job well done by the BC Wildfire Service!

Providing the public with the authoritative and timely information they need, be it out of concern for loved ones or understanding their own proximity to hazards, is a key component to any successful emergency management program. That is why the configurable dashboard is a main pillar of the new Emergency Management Operations Solution, which Esri Canada developed to provide organizations the ability to make informed decisions when they matter most. This collection of apps will allow you to: