This preprint should be cited as follows:

Green, D.G. Gill, A.M. & Trevitt, A.C.F. (1993). 
FireNet - an international network for landscape fire information. 
Wildfire - Quarterly Bulletin of the 
International Association of Wildland Fire 2(4), 22-30.

FireNet - an international network for landscape fire information

David G. Green 1, A. Malcolm Gill 2 and A. Chris F. Trevitt 3

Research School of Biological Sciences, Australian National University, GPO Box 475 Canberra 2601 Australia Tel. 61-6-249-2490, Fax 61-6-249-4437 Email: david.green@anu.edu.au
Division of Plant Industry, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Canberra 2601 Australia Tel. 61-6-246-5116, Fax 61-6-246-5000 Email: malcolm@pican.pi.csiro.au
Forestry Department, Australian National University, Canberra 0200 Australia Tel. 61-6-249-2938, Fax 61-6-249-0746 Email chris.trevitt@anu.edu.au

Abstract. Internet, a world-wide electronic network, provides the opportunity to set up discipline-oriented information networks. Here we describe the concept and operation of FireNet, an international information retrieval network for those interested in l andscape fires. We also announce the installation of the first node of FireNet. Its initial contents include a bibliographic database, some software packages, current weather reports and imagery, and various documents, including source material and graphics for tertiary courses. Fire managers may use the system as a "free" source of management aids; fire researchers (including fire scientists and fire ecologists) will appreciate the bibliography and software packages; and students will benefit from the availability of source material for their courses.

Keywords: Fire management; Education; Research; Internet; Gopher; World Wide Web

Introduction

Access to up-to-date information is essential for everyone concerned with landscape fires. Fire fighters, for instance, need constant access to information about current weather and fuel conditions. Managers need information about recent fire patterns so that they can plan future strategies. Researchers need to collate data about fire behaviour, fire control and fire effects. Finally, students need source material on all aspects of landscape fires. In this paper, we describe the concept and operation of an international information retrieval system - FireNet - for everyone concerned with landscape fires and announce the installation of its first node on InterNet. We use Australian examples for convenience but the system is international.

Fire management, by its very nature, calls for better communication. In many parts of Australia it is not unusual to find just one or two staff responsible for many thousands, even millions, of hectares. Isolation and poor communication are still features of rural and outback life. In extreme fire conditions, this can sometimes lead to life threatening situations. Even in day to day management, there is always room to update ideas and thinking, and to learn about others' successes and failures.

In the past, slow and uncoordinated communication meant that essential information was often out of date before it reached intended consumers; sometimes it failed to reach those who needed it. Managers, for instance, were often unaware of relevant research results. Likewise management records that would be invaluable to research lay uncollated and unused. Another problem is the waste of effort arising from duplication. In an era when funding and resources are increasingly limited in many countries, professionals simply cannot afford to be ignorant of material and information that is already available elsewhere. Paradoxically, those who possess critical knowledge or information are often more than willing to share it for the benefit and use of others. All too often this sharing is frustrated because individuals with common interests are either unknown to each other, too remote, or too busy.

Recent developments in telecommunications and information technology make it both feasible and cost-effective to overcome the above problems through a computer network, which we call FireNet. This network aims to provide rapid exchange of relevant information between everyone concerned with landscape fires. The first node is now operating at the Australian National University, Canberra. FireNet has many advantages over existing means of communication:

it can be accessed in "real time" from virtually anywhere in the world;
its services are freely available to anyone who can access the Internet (or any regional component, such as AARNET - the Australian Academic Research Network);
it provides several means of access, ranging from electronic mail to "hypermedia", in which live, key-word links between documents and images permit rapid searching and retrieval;
the necessary software is freely available and readily accessible;
it is not limited by the resources (human and computing) of a single host site but can grow indefinitely into an information system that is distributed seamlessly across many different sites around the globe.

The Information Technology Setting for FireNet

Internet

During the 1980s computer networks grew and merged to form Internet, a vast communications web that now links together thousands of computers and literally millions of computer users around the globe (Krol, 1992). Along with these interconnections came protocols for communicating between machines, such as electronic mail and FTP (File Transfer Protocol).

Recognizing the value of free information exchange, many sites on Internet permit "guest" users to log in and retrieve information (Fig. 1). Using "anonymous FTP", for instance, network users have access to vast amounts of public domain information. Amongst other things, this information includes software of all kinds, entire libraries of electronic books (e.g. the complete works of Shakespeare), and satellite images.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
ftp life.anu.edu.au
                            (log in to the site LIFE at the 
                            (Australian National University
Connected to life.anu.edu.au.
220 life FTP server ready.
Name :  anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:
                            (give your electronic mail address
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp# ?
                            (request a list of ftp commands
                            (details omitted
ftp# cd /pub/landscape_ecology/firenet
                            (switch to the FireNet directory
ftp# ascii
                            (changes to text mode
ftp# get FireNet.hlp
                            (copy the FireNet help file
ftp# dir
                            (gives you a directory listing
ftp# bin
                            (changes mode to binary
ftp# cd ./weather
                            (switch to the weather directory
ftp# get australialast.gif
                            (get today's weather image
ftp# cd .. 
                            (revert to FireNet's main directory
ftp# quit
                            (close this interactive session 
-------------------------------------------------------------------

Note: Words typed by the user are given in bold letters. Comments are given in brackets. Figure 1. Example of an anonymous FTP session to FireNet.

During 1992 a new protocol called "Gopher", which was developed at the University of Minnesota, spread rapidly throughout Internet. Gopher servers provide menus from which users (anywhere on the network) can choose items that they wish to see. Users of gopher run a "client" program (freely available for many types of computers), which can communicate with any of the gopher servers on the network. When a user selects an item from a menu (Fig. 2) the client software automatically transmits a request to the selected server, which then transmits back the required information. This information may be a document, a program, an image, sounds, or another menu. Most importantly, the items in a gopher menu can include "links" to information on other servers. For instance, any gopher server can provide (say) a weather information service simply by combining, in a single menu, links to sites that hold weather data. A gopher user literally has the entire resources of all gopher servers in the world at his or her fingertips.

Another important protocol is World Wide Web, developed at CERN in Switzerland. Rather than menus, it provides "hypertext" links embedded in documents (Fig. 3). During 1993 the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) developed a multimedia browser (Mosaic) for World Wide Web documents. In this system, users view formatted documents, which contain hypermedia links in the form of highlighted terms or icons. Selecting one of these links (which replace menus in gopher) tells the software to retrieve the selected item for display, from wherever in the world it may be stored. The items may be formatted documents, images, audio, or even animation. Documents for display are formatted using the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).

FireNet

The FireNet system provides servers for each of the protocols described above (Table 1). All of the software required to use these (and several other) protocols is freely available from many sites on Internet. The information currently available on FireNet is summarized in Table 2.

FireNet consists of a set of coordinated "nodes" that together provide all the information available through FireNet. Each node is a computer site that maintains active servers for one or more of the protocols used by FireNet. Links between the sites ensure that information stored at any one node is available at all nodes. Users access FireNet by using one of the standard protocols to link to any node in the network (Table 1).

It is intended that there be some redundancy in the system; that is any piece of information held at one site would normally be "mirrored" (i.e. copied) on another node. This procedure helps to reduce international satellite traffic and provides some robustness whenever a node, or part of the network, goes off-line.

The concept

Although we anticipate that there will be a wide variety of users of FireNet, we focus here on managers, researchers and students to indicate the utility of the system.

Fire managers

Fire management plans are drawn up within guidelines set by a general management framework and are followed by a works program designed to achieve set objectives. A formal fire-management plan usually consists of activities that are common to many land-use systems: establishment of fire-management aims and objectives; identifying issues; carrying out inventories and surveys; resolving issues; monitoring; and identifying research needs. At each of these steps, FireNet has potential, if not immediate, value.

For all activities, FireNet could allow comparisons with what other managers have done or are doing. Initially, the main aid in this respect is the inclusion of the "Bibliography of Fire Ecology in Australia" (Gill et al. 1991), with an on-line search facility, into FireNet. We plan for the Bibliography to be updated more frequently than the current two-year period. There is also potential for the inclusion of bibliographies and abstracts covering a wider range of topics and a wider geographic area.

Over the past decade and a half in Australia there has been a move towards the use of electronically-assisted management systems. These systems now include the use of electronically stored and retrieved resource data (geographic information systems), process models such as PREPLAN (Kessell et al. 1982) and expert systems (Walker et al. 1985). Managers in Australia have been reluctant to adopt complex computer packages. One solution to this problem may be for managers to build their own systems from a range of components "off the shelf"; FireNet could act as a "free" store from which managers can select some or all of the products for testing under their particular circumstances. Copies of the software can be immediately transferred electronically to local networks or individual computers.

In the future, we anticipate the availability of systems for monitoring plant species, such as that of Gill and Nicholls (1989), and the species information on which such systems are currently based (Gill and Bradstock, 1992). Some taxonomic information is already available on-line. Potentially, more weather data and imagery can be made available on the system; at present, FireNet provides current satellite images of weather systems over Australia, Europe, Africa and North America. Comprehensive weather reports and forecasts, currently available for North America only, will probably become available for many other countries. There is a great variety of biophysical data that can be made available through the network. A further development would be the publication on FireNet of bulletins, manuals, management plans and reports from the various land management agencies.

An electronic bulletin board provides an ideal facility for pooling and exchanging information. Rausher and Johnson (1991) observe that: "Hypertext systems are being used extensively for online documentation of software, for collaborative problem-solving applications, for effective synthesis and communication of complex subjects ... and for knowledge management ..." For instance, such systems permit searching through text by theme and/or key-word, thereby assisting users to rapidly retrieve all relevant archival material on a given subject.

The electronic university

The teaching/learning process must address not only knowledge, but also skills and attitudes. Undergraduate teaching programs, however, have usually focussed on knowledge acquisition (Ballard and Clanchy, 1991). Saveland and Stock (1989) note that a teacher presenting a course must: acquire information; organise information; transmit this information to students; and evaluate the effectiveness of the transmission process. These steps, they suggest, are similar to those faced by a knowledge engineer when building an expert system. Machine-based information management, systems such as we describe here, are now capable of largely automating the first three of the above four steps. This would leave teachers free to concentrate on the education process, especially developing skills and forming attitudes. Automated systems also help students to develop essential skills in the use of information technology.

One goal of FireNet is to compile a comprehensive "digital textbook". One of us (CT) has already drafted content material, including both text and graphics, for several modules. But this is only the beginning. The flow of information from fire managers, scientists, and many others, would provide source material for constantly updating modules. Thus the repository of information on FireNet has the potential to become a "living digital textbook". Figure 4 illustrates one possible configuration to achieve this goal. Hypermedia tools available on FireNet would permit the use of images, or even animated sequences to help students visualize important weather processes, such as trends and cycles in the onset of droughts and the outbreak of severe fire weather conditions. Another opportunity arising from housing teaching/learning resource material on the global Internet is cooperative national and international curriculum development. This can lead to savings in time and effort for participating institutions and a greater depth and scope in the material available to students.

Figure 4 illustrates one way in which course material, information and support documents can be structured so as to allow logical 'browsing'. With increased experience of developing and using this system, and regular evaluation of student performance and satisfaction, preferred structures for categorising and interlinking material will emerge. Careful monitoring of this process could lead to important insights into the nature of the teaching/learning process.

Unlike present education systems, where course coordinators and designers are subject to relatively few checks and balances, the system we envisage is strongly self-checking. Experts would be able to audit material placed on FireNet immediately it is implemented. Beside the above negative feedback path, there is an equally important positive feedback process. Students who have benefited from the system will be able to continue using it "on the job". Even if they work in remote locations they will be able to maintain contact with colleagues and continue to learn from the resources provided by FireNet. As their experience grows, recent graduates will be in a unique position to feedback material for the next student generation. Selected case study material relating actual weather conditions and fire behaviour can provide a useful surrogate for first-hand experience (Trevitt et al., 1993). In this way we should witness a closing of the gap between experienced and inexperienced managers, together with a constantly changing yet up-to-date, comprehensive and operationally relevant, database.

Students undertaking the ANU Forestry unit "Fire Science and Management" in 1993 have already welcomed a prototype of FireNet in the form of course notes resident on a local-area network. Notes are stored on a central server and can be accessed in student laboratories all over campus. A full set of course notes (hundreds of pages of text, including diagrams) can be copied to one or two diskettes, costing only a few dollars. The equivalent material in a textbook, always assuming it is sufficiently up-to-date to warrant buying in the first place, would cost an order of magnitude more.

Fire research

Research may be viewed as a four stage process: identifying questions, gathering relevant information, analyzing and interpreting information, and disseminating results. We intend that FireNet will assist researchers at each of these stages.

In the first stage, it will allow managers and others to relay questions and issues to researchers essentially in real time. This ability will increase the likelihood of relevant research questions being addressed in a timely manner. It will also help to minimize unnecessary duplication of research.
In the information gathering stage, not only can researchers more effectively reach sources of relevant information, but also contribute to repositories of raw data, such as management records and past experimental results.
In the analysis stage, researchers may be able to access relevant software or search bibliographies.
In the dissemination phase, researchers will be able to broadcast abstracts of their papers and to distribute complete preprints. These practices are already widespread in many fields (e.g. physics). Electronic journals, operating via Internet, are appearing with increasing frequency.

FireNet already provides various software packages that will be of interest to fire researchers. For example IGNITE (Green et al. 1990) simulates bushfire spread interactively on a PC (Fig. 5) and MOSAIC (Green 1989) is a generic package for modelling vegetation and fire effects on a landscape. These and other contributed programs can be used both as research tools and as teaching aids. Scientists may also value the listing of basic information, such as the fire danger index equations from Noble et al (1980) and other fire spread formulations for different fuel types.

Operation of the system

FireNet nodes

Our intention is that FireNet will grow to become a distributed information system comprised of nodes all around the world. We invite interested organizations and individuals to set up new nodes. However, simply providing a link into FireNet from a Gopher or World Wide Web server is not enough. To ensure that growth occurs in an orderly way we suggest the principle that a new node should satisfy certain basic requirements:

It accepts and stores relevant, contributed material;
It provides some form of public access for FireNet users;
It provide some unique information, or mirrors other nodes;
It provides organized links to other FireNet nodes;
It coordinates its activity with other FireNet nodes.

The specific protocols will be refined as the system grows. Further information is available from the existing FireNet node(s).

Contributing information

At the time of writing, protocols are being designed for contributions of information to FireNet. These protocols include pro formas for datasets and documents to be entered and catalogued in standard format. It is planned to implement quality control procedures to ensure the accuracy and validity of information available through FireNet.

Practical issues

The biggest hindrance to users of FireNet at present is access. In Australia, as in many parts of the world, full-scale access to AARNET/Internet can be both difficult and expensive. Many commercial and non-profit organizations offer varying degrees of public access to the network.

The minimum hardware requirement is a personal computer with network connection (modem or hard-wired link to an Internet node). Anyone with access to electronic mail can subscribe to the mailing list. For direct network access, the minimal software requirement is FTP, Telnet, or equivalent.

Full hypermedia access demands adequate client software. At the time of writing Xmosaic (Fig. 3) is available for Unix/X11 workstations and Cello for MS-Windows. Other World Wide Web client software for personal computers (DOS, Macintosh) are due for release during 1993. Full details are available via FireNet or from CERN (ftp.cern.ch). Gopher client software is already available, for most computing systems, from the University of Minnesota (boombox.umn.edu) and many other sites. Many sites (e.g. info.anu.edu.au) allow guest users to log in (using Telnet) and run their (text-only) gopher or World Wide Web client.

Conclusion

FireNet is operational. It provides users with ready access to "free" weather information and images, references, software packages, university course material and more. It has the potential to provide weather forecasts for real-time fire situations and to provide a means for fire managers to communicate problems to a worldwide audience, including fire researchers unknown to them. Scientists can benefit from the rapid dissemination of their research findings. There is potential for students and lecturers around the world to peruse courses available in other countries or other areas.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the following for useful discussions and comments: Mr Tony Barry, Mr Ken Johnson, Dr Bob Moles, Dr Ian Noble, Dr Malcolm Pettigrove, Mr Eddie Pook, and Dr Joe Walker. Figure 4 was prepared by Sonja Hedenstroem. DGG's work was funded by the Australian Research Council.

References

Ballard, B. and Clanchy, J. 1991. Teaching Students from Overseas, Longman Cheshire. Melbourne, 100pp.
Gill, A.M. and Bradstock, R.A. 1992. A national register for the fire responses of plant species. Cunninghamia 2: 653-660.
Gill, A.M. and Nicholls, A.O. 1989. Monitoring fire-prone flora in reserves for nature conservation. In: Fire Management on Nature Conservation Lands (Ed. Burrows, N., McCaw,L. and Friend,G.). pp 137-151.
Gill, A.M., Moore, P.H.R. and Armstrong, J.S. 1991. Bibliography of Fire Ecology in Australia, Edition 3. Department of Fire Services, New South Wales, Sydney.
Green, D.G. 1989. Simulated effects of fire, dispersal and spatial pattern on competition within vegetation mosaics. Vegetatio 82: 139-153.
Green, D.G., Tridgell, A. and Gill, A.M. 1990. Interactive simulation of bushfires in heterogeneous fuels. Mathematical and Computer Modelling 13(12): 57-66.
Kessell, S.R., Good, R.B. and Potter, M.W. 1982. Computer modelling in natural area management. Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service Special Publication 9, 44pp.
Krol, E. 1992. The Whole Internet. O'Reilly and Associates.
Noble, I.R., Bary, G.A.V. and Gill, A.M. 1980. McArthur's fire-danger meters expressed as equations. Australian Journal of Ecology 5: 20l-203.
Rausher, H.M., and Johnson, S. 1991. Authoring hypertext documents using HyperWriter!. AI Applications 5: 116-119.
Saveland, J.M., and Stock, M. 1989. Knowledge engineering: lessons from teaching. AI Applications 3: 45-52.
Trevitt, A.C.F., Stals, L. and Sachse-Akerlind, G. 1993. Computer-aided learning in Australian fire weather and climate. Extended abstract for presentation at 1st International Conference on Computer-aided Learning (CAL) and Distance Learning in Meteorology, Hydrology, and Oceanography (CALMet), 5-9 July 1993, Boulder, Colorado.
Walker, J., Davis, J.R. and Gill, A.M. (Eds) 1985. Towards an Expert System for Fire Management at Kakadu National Park, 169 pp. Technical Memorandum 85/2. CSIRO Division of Water and Land Resources: Canberra.

Table 1.

Entry points to FireNet's first node

------------------------------------------------------------------

Gopher protocol 

Name=FireNet (ANU node)
Host=life.anu.edu.au
Type=1
Port=70
Path=1/landscape_ecology/firenet


World Wide Web protocol

http://life.anu.edu.au/landscape_ecology/firenet/firenet.html

------------------------------------------------------------------

Table 2.

Information initially available via FireNet's Australian node

----------------------------------------------------

Bibliography 
	
Fire research in Australia (searchable database)


Software
	IGNITE - interactive simulation of fire spread 
	FDI    - calculates (Australian) fire danger index
	MOSAIC - simulates effects of fire on landscape vegetation


Environmental monitoring
	Satellite images (Australia & most of the world)
	Weather reports and forecasts (North America, Australia)

Documents, preprints etc
	Educational source material
	Fire research papers
	Disaster management 
	Environmental management, policy, and projects

Relevant databases
	Plant taxonomy
	Environmental history
	
Communications
	Relevant Usenet newsgroups
	FireNet mail server
----------------------------------------------------

FIGURES

Figure 1.: Example of an anonymous FTP session to FireNet.
Figure 2.: FireNet's initial Xgopher interface. The menu lists all items available at this node. Arrows before an item indicate that the item is a menu providing further options; "idx" indicates a searchable index. The selected item (weather) is highlighted in black. The bookmark entries at the bottom of the window allow the user to create customized menus by saving links to items of interest.
Figure 3.: FireNet's hypermedia interface. The figure shows: part of FireNet's "home page" under Xmosaic's interface to World Wide Web, a typical satellite weather image, and some lecture notes on fire control.
Figure 4.: Plan for organizing teaching materials under FireNet.
Figure 5.: Examples of scenarios with the fire behaviour program IGNITE (Green et al., 1991). The maps are aerial photographs, with trees (dark spots), roads (lines), and firefronts (black) marked. The scenarios show spread of a fire ignited by a match thrown from a passing car (top) and the effects of fuelbreaks and fuel reduction (bottom).