Blog · ForestWatch
Forest fires should not be answered in the order they arrive.
Most fire-season desks work through alerts top to bottom: oldest first, or whichever phone rang last. We think the order itself is the first thing to fix.
The habit nobody chose
On a busy fire-season afternoon a division can see many detections at once: satellite hotspots, watch-tower calls, ranger photos in chat groups. Nobody sits down and decides the order in which they will be answered. The order emerges from the tools. An email inbox sorts by time. A chat group sorts by whoever posted last. A phone sorts by whoever is calling right now.
That order has nothing to do with which fire matters most. A hotspot that arrived first may be a small burn in grassland with no wind and nothing downhill of it. The one that arrived twenty minutes later may be on a slope, in dry fuel, with the wind pushing it towards a village or a wildlife corridor. Answered in arrival order, the second fire waits behind the first.
What should decide the order
The factors are not mysterious. Every experienced range officer weighs them in their head. The problem is that a head can hold a handful of incidents, not a whole division’s worth, and two officers will weigh them differently on the same afternoon.
| Factor | Why it changes the rank |
|---|---|
| Fire weather at the nearest station | Dry, hot, windy conditions let a small fire grow quickly |
| Wind direction and speed | Decides what lies in the path, not just what lies nearby |
| Fuel load | Dense dry litter burns differently from a cleared patch |
| Settlements and corridors in the path | People and wildlife at risk raise the stakes |
| Age of the incident | An unacknowledged report should climb, not sink |
Written down, this is a ranking rule. Applied by software, it is the same rule every time, for every incident, on every shift. That consistency is the real gain: not that a machine is wiser than an officer, but that the officer no longer has to rebuild the ranking from scratch every time a new alert lands.
Why the age of an incident belongs in the rank
It is tempting to rank only on danger. We think that is a mistake. A report that nobody has picked up is itself a risk, because nobody knows what is happening there. If the rank ignores age, a moderate fire can sit untouched all afternoon while the desk chases the louder ones. Including the time since the report arrived, against an acknowledgement target, keeps every incident moving. ForestWatch works to an acknowledgement target of under fifteen minutes for every incident, and the age counts towards its position in the queue.
A ranking the desk can argue with
A ranked list is only useful if people trust it, and they will only trust it if they can see why something is at the top. So the reasons should sit next to the rank: the fire-weather reading, the wind, the fuel, what lies in the path. When an officer disagrees, they should be able to see which input they disagree with. That conversation is far more useful than an argument about whose phone call was more urgent.
We would also keep the human decision. The rank tells the desk where to look first. It does not dispatch a crew by itself, and it should not.
How ForestWatch approaches it
ForestWatch puts protected-area maps, satellite hotspots, fire-weather stations, ranger reports and response crews on one screen. Each detection carries fire weather, wind and fuel; settlements and corridors in the path raise the rank; and the queue also weighs SLA age, so the worst fire is always first. Ranger photos sent on WhatsApp become located incidents in the same queue, and the nearest crew, tanker or blower can be assigned with an ETA.
If you are still deciding what a control room needs, start with what a forest fire control room is and needs, and for the detection side, using satellite hotspot alerts well. The rest is in ForestWatch guides and tools.
One change to make before next season
Even without new software, write the ranking rule down. List the factors your best officers already use, agree the order of importance, and pin it beside the desk. Then ask, at the end of each busy day, whether the fires were answered in that order or in arrival order. The gap between the two is the case for changing how the desk works.
Questions
Why not answer forest fire alerts in the order they arrive?
Arrival order reflects when a message landed, not how dangerous the fire is. A later alert on a windy slope with a village downhill can matter far more than an earlier one in open grassland.
What should a forest fire queue be ranked on?
Fire weather, wind, fuel load, settlements and wildlife corridors in the path, and how long the incident has gone unacknowledged.
Does a ranked queue replace the officer’s judgement?
No. It tells the desk where to look first and shows the reasons; the officer still decides on dispatch.
See it on your own data. ForestWatch — Every hotspot, ranked by risk. Book a 30-minute working session with an engineer.