Extreme and cascading events are increasing in frequency and severity due to a warming and changing planet

The hazards are widespread, complex, and disproportionately affect underserved and disadvantaged communities. Innovative strategies and improved tools are needed to mitigate the growing impact of these extreme events, including improved modeling, forecasting, data fusion, and information distribution. Multiple federal agencies collect data, model, and forecast extreme events. But the data are spread across many systems and difficult for the public to assimilate. The goal of this sbir is to perform data fusion and dissemination research that cuts across federal agencies. This research will develop an open architecture system that emphasizes data fusion and actionable information dissemination as the core capability. The phase I feasibility demonstration will incorporate a wildfire module. Additional extreme event modules will be added in phase II. Wildfire is an extreme event that poses significant cascading hazards to humans. At close range, wildfires are a threat to life, property, and infrastructure. But, the health impacts of smoke travel far and wide. Research will culminate with a feasibility demonstration of integrating real-time fire mapping with fire and smoke modeling, and actionable information distribution in real-time. The extreme event modeling and data fusion for decision support system will provide actionable information to emergency managers and the public. As envisioned, emergency managers will be able to provide curated web page links through the reverse-911 text message system. Greater access to information will allow the public to better prepare for evacuation or sheltering in place. The end goal is to save lives, property, and infrastructure. Phase I will provide lessons learned from a live feasibility demonstration that will guide the focus of the phase II prototyping effort. The technology envisioned has broad commercialization potential. Emergency and risk management software is a growing market with extreme events occurring more frequently and with greater impact. Federal, state, and local agencies are target customers as well as private insurance companies and utilities.