SCC-IRG Track 1: Smart and Safe Prescribed Burning for Rangeland and Wildland Urban Interface Communities

长期以来，大平原的牧场主和农民一直将规定的火灾作为土地管理工具。它们通过补充土壤、增加饲料产量和保护草原免受入侵性过度生长来帮助耕作和放牧。农村和荒地城市界面（WUI）社区也使用它们来清除积聚的燃料，以减少野火的风险。尽管规定的火灾有许多好处，但规定的燃烧事件存在安全和环境问题。在安全方面，逃逸的火灾或由阴燃燃料重新点燃的火灾可能变得无法控制，并导致严重的财产损失和人员伤害。在环境方面，规定的火灾产生的烟雾对当地社区和下风向社区造成空气污染。为了管理和尽量减少这些问题，最佳规划和执行规定的火灾是至关重要的。该项目的目标是开发一个社区传感，规划和学习基础设施，以支持智能和安全的规定燃烧的社区使用规定的火灾牧场和野火风险管理。开发的基础设施将集成到基于云的平台中，以支持土地所有者优化计划和操作规定的燃烧，收集和共享有关燃烧的数据，并培训消防操作员学习最有效的燃烧方法。该项目还将通过加强学术界、农村社区和地方政府之间的伙伴关系，提高对在农村地区建设智能社区的技术认识。该项目的综合研究包括：1）多尺度传感和数据融合技术研究，数据驱动的燃烧条件建模，草原燃料地图&热点检测，火灾行为建模和模拟; 2）社会科学研究，解决社区如何通过使用技术参与和协调燃烧实践的知识差距;以及3）社区参与，开发工具，数据存储库和活动，以支持社区的智能和安全的规定燃烧。多尺度传感和数据融合集成了来自不同来源的数据，包括卫星遥感，无人驾驶飞机系统和众包报告。我们将与堪萨斯的两个社区合作，以评估和展示已开发的研究：1）Gyp Hills社区代表一个牧场社区，平均规定的火灾覆盖数百英亩的主要用于放牧的草地;（二）东堪萨斯社区代表了WUI郊区的一个社区，在那里，规定的火灾规模较小。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，

Prescribed fires have long been used by ranchers and farmers in the Great Plains as a land management tool. They help farming and grazing by replenishing the soil, increasing forage production, and protecting prairies from invasive overgrowth. They are also used by rural and Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) communities to remove built-up fuels for reducing risks of wildfires. Despite the many benefits of prescribed fires, there are safety and environmental concerns for prescribed burn events. On the safety aspect, an escaped fire or a fire reignited from smoldering fuels can become uncontrolled and result in severe property damages and injuries to people. On the environmental aspect, smoke from prescribed fires causes air pollution for local communities and communities downwind. To manage and minimize these concerns, optimal planning and execution of prescribed fires are crucial. The objective of this project is to develop a community sensing, planning, and learning infrastructure to support smart and safe prescribed burning for communities that use prescribed fires for rangeland and wildfire risk management. The developed infrastructure will be integrated into a cloud-based platform to support landowners to optimally plan and operate prescribed burns, collect and share data about burning, and train fire operators to learn the most effective ways of burning. The project will also promote technology awareness for building smart communities in rural areas, by increasing partnerships among academia, rural communities, and local governments. The integrated research of this project includes: 1) technical research on multi-scale sensing and data fusion, data-driven burn condition modeling, grassland fuel mapping & hotspot detection, and fire behavior modeling and simulation; 2) social science research that addresses the knowledge gap on how communities engage with and coordinate burn practices through the use of technology; and 3) community engagement that develops tools, data repositories, and activities to support communities’ smart and safe prescribed burning. The multiscale sensing and data fusion integrate data from heterogeneous sources including satellite remote sensing, unmanned aircraft systems, and crowdsourced reports. We will work with two communities in Kansas to evaluate and demonstrate the developed research: 1) The Gyp Hills community represents a rangeland community where an average prescribed fire covers over hundreds of acres for grasslands primarily used for grazing; 2) the Eastern Kansas community represents a suburban WUI community where prescribed fires are employed at a smaller scale.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.