I always closely follow Colorado news and current events as I have a personal interest there and if you’ve been watching the news over the week-end no doubt you’ve heard about the out of control High Park wildfire (check out this video shot Sunday afternoon) – see #highparkfire on Twitter. NOCO has an awesome GeoGeek community and loads of quality Geo Tech professionals, however, given that we’re dealing with the week-end here many of the official, authoritative sources have likely been scrambling and may even be difficult to locate. As a result, some of the techs that have been scrambling to scape data and mashup information to share with the local community in Fort Collins are having a tough time getting current data along with regular updates. 

Note: If you happen to be with a company that has access to aerial imagery, fire perimeter data, satellite imagery or other relevant data please contact one or more of the local geo professionals to see if there’s anything you can do to help out. Having real-time or almost real-time data for sharing with the public is crucial and has been very tough to come by.

Kris Peterson of Mapbiquity (@mapbiquity) has done a fine job building a WMS map mashup of the area and his wife Gretchen Peterson (@petersongis) is helping to update the evacuation areas map – a crucial resource – See the HighParkFire webmap on Mapbiquity

FYI Mapbiquity now has a home for their fire mapping thanks to nick Armstrong http://cohighparkfiremap.org/

Note, image above was approximate as of Saturday (June 9) evening…

If you have access to relevant information resources please feel free to contact myself @gletham or anyone else mentioned in this post. Other Geo/Tech Professionals in the area sharing information include:

• Royce Simpson @roycesimpson
• Dave Bouwman @dbouwman
• Rich Ruh @richruh
• Nick Armstrong @imnickarmstrong
• Brian Sullivan @taliesn
  
• @cosmitty

See http:// cohighparkfiremap.org/

Data Notes and other maps and mashups

Note, perimeter data is obtained from http://www.nifc.gov/

ALSO, Dave Bouwman and crew at DTSagile (@dbouwman) have a wildfire map viewer, initially developed for a Texas wildfire mapping effort, however, if you scroll to Colorado you can click on the data icons to view various data feeds relevant to this region. see http://tx.dtswildfire.com/ Data displayed on this WMS include social media feeds from Twitter, facebook, and youtube;  TFS fire data; Inciweb; Nexrad; Red Cross

Update, Dave and the DTS gang now have the CO WMS live at http://co.dtswildfire.com/

GeoCommons – the popular online webmap mashup resource at Geocommons has a fine hosted map service and there’s a map developed by a user "Brendan" below – see http://geocommons.com/maps/176979

ArcGIS.com

Esri’s ArcGIS.com is also very useful for searching out public data layers and creating / sharing custom map mashups – Esri has a wildfire news map HERE for some info. I quickly created a visualization to share by setting up a basemap and adding several relevant public data layers (fire perimeters from GeoMAC, smoke levels, and fire fuel) for direct link or below:

Other weblinks and resources:

• InciWeb Incident news updates on High Park Fire

• Coloradoan: High Park Fire maps and resources

• GISuser Emergency Response Articles
  

• USDA Forest Service and NASA release Web-based forest disturbance monitoring tool
• RiskMeter.com Adds Texas Wildfire Report to its Service
• Webinar to Discuss Role of Geospatial Information Systems in Forest Fire Prevention
• Texas Wildfires Social News Map from Esri
• Social Map Tip – Wildfire News Map Helps You Cover the 2011 Fire Season
• National Inter vAgency Fire Center http://www.nifc.gov/