Drawn by hand, building by building, block by block, they were eventually abandoned because they were too labor intensive. Today fire officers need specific information on fire problems more than ever. Electronic fire management means using a computer to achieve excellence in fire planning. Ronny J. Coleman Retired California State Fire Marshall Maps are the foundation for fighting wildfires. They are used for communicating operational assignments, potential spread scenarios, and for providing a visual reference for incident team strategy discussion.
Maps help managers deploy resources safely and assess the potential overall damage of the fire.
In the early stages of a wildfire, it is difficult to obtain good detailed information from a paper map. Information is often gathered from maps, documents, and technical personnel over several days. Using GIS, all of this information is immediately available and can be easily viewed and understood under extremely stressful conditions. It is now common to see a GIS team assigned to an incident in the planning section. GIS teams provide maps showing transportation, facilities, air hazards, spread prediction, operations, and other geographically related incident management information.