1. Fire Proximity Awareness
Larry Wiebe, Manitoba Hydro
Geospatial Data Services, GIS Data Specialist
April 11, 2013

2. Background

3. Evolution of Fire Data
 Pull Fire.SHP (poly) from MB Fire Program
 Used HTTPFetcher to pull down ZIP daily and
overwrite previous days data

4. Fire – Initial Map

5. Evolution of Fire Data
 Issues with volume and legibility of data
 Used InsidePointExtractor to pull a point within
polygon to create event theme and filtered out
extinguished fires

6. Fire – Point Representation

7. Evolution of Fire Data
 Move to KML source
– added unclassified
potential fires and
eliminated file
handling
 KML processing
significantly more
complicated due to
data issues. Had to
perform geometry
cleaning and XML
parsing

8. Manitoba Hydro Infrastructure
 Defined a set of critical electric/gas infrastructure
 Transmission
 Sub-Transmission
 Stations
 Distribution
 Communications
 Construction Corridor
 Used AttributeCreator and LineJoiner to summarize
features to how we needed them for the map

9. Evolution of Fire Data
 Added proximity for each fire within 30km of
Hydro infrastructure using NeighborFinder
 Create closest distance attribute to infrastructure
type for Provincial view

10. Fire – Proximity at MB Level

11. Evolution of Fire Data
 Create line to each of closest critical
infrastructure types

12. Fire – Proximity at Fire Level

13. Evolution of Fire Data
 Added storage of each fire change based on its
review date, status or size changes
 Each time a Fire KML is read, it is compared with
the latest data and new records are created if data
has changed
 Will be used to track fire progression in 2013 fire
season

14. Near Real Time Weather
 KML source read every 15 minutes, wind and
temperature of greatest importance for fires
 Helps user determine the potential risk based on
heat (dryness) and wind strength and direction
 Colour indicates temperature, arrow shows
direction, while arrow size indicated wind speed
 Issues with processing included:
 Lots of string manipulation for final output
 Attribute manipulation for final output
 Duplicates in data needed to be weeded out

15. Weather Workbench

16. Weather on Map

17. Supporting Fire Data
 MODIS Hot Spots
 WMS Service merged into Portal
 Shows past 24 and 48 hour hot spots
 Environment Canada Weather Radar
 Shows current precipitation and severe weather
 Administrative Boundaries and Cadastral Fabric
for Land Reference
 RCMP and Bulk Fuel locations for Emergencies
 Several base maps including imagery

18. Supporting Data

19. Field Verification
 MB Hydro has Satellite Tracking devices for Crew
Safety
 Can route a Crew (helicopter) to a high risk fire
where verification/status required
 Web service – refreshed every 5 minutes
 Automated with Python startup script
 History of device movement stored
 Emergency Status can be flagged
 Automated – bad data handled

20. Crew Location – FME Key Tasks
 Queries Web Service every 5 minutes
 Write a time stamp to an attribute file when
complete
 Merges 2 query results into one dataset
 Use Last written time stamp as start for new web
service query
 Add new data only
 Lots of date manipulation
 Spatial filter takes bad positions and repositions in
case of emergency situation

21. FME Workbench with Python

22. Crew Location

23. Crew History – FME Key Tasks
 Runs after Points gathered every 5 minutes
 SpatialFilter only uses data in Manitoba
 Assembles points into lines based on UTC
date/time sequence using PointConnector
 LengthCalculator assigns Length attribute
 StatisticsCalculator assign UTC start and end times

24. FME Workbench – Crew History

25. Crew History by Day

26. Futures
 Full History – so fire progression can be tracked
 FME Server – better automation and notification
 Plume Modeling
 Mobile
 Handle other Emergencies
 Flooding
 Severe Storms
 Lightning

27. Thank You!
 Questions?
 For more information:
 Larry Wiebe, lawiebe@hydro.mb.ca
 Geospatial Data Services
 Manitoba Hydro