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Effective
storage, management, and analysis of fire ecology-related
data is critical to meeting the Fire Ecology Program's
mission. A Business Needs Analysis (2002) determined
that a new application for storing, managing, and analyzing
National Park Service (NPS) fire effects monitoring
data was needed. FEAT, the Fire Ecology Assessment Tool,
was developed to meet that need.
Spatial Dynamics (developer of FEAT) has created the FEAT Forum to download FEAT and share information about the tool.
FEAT is a comprehensive, relational
database management system that was developed to support
immediate and long-term monitoring and reporting of
fire effects in the National Park Service units. The
system will make monitoring data readily available at
the Park level, with the long-term goal of having Internet-accessible
databases at the local, regional, and national level
in order to disseminate results to land managers (fire
and resource professionals) and other scientists. FEAT's
data structure and design will facilitate data sharing
between the NPS Wildland Fire Management Program, natural
resource programs, and other agencies, resulting in
broader and more comprehensive landscape scale assessments.
The system is based on the integration
of ESRI ArcView (8.3), MS Access, MS Pocket Access (PDA),
and a statistical package. Spatial data is used to define
monitoring or sampling strata based on fire history
as well as any combination of other spatial resource
data, such as hydrology, vegetation cover, elevation,
facilities, road networks, or management plans. The
system supports the generation of located sample plots,
allows collection of field sampling data using digital
PDAs, automated database updating, statistical data
analysis, and reporting of sampling results.
FEAT is fully compatible with the
Windows operating system and the automated tools contained
in MS Office. FMH, a legacy system, relies on a program
language and operating system that are no longer supported.
FEAT offers the full functionality of FMH as well as
comprehensive automated tools. FEAT, ArcGIS, and Access
are individual programs. FEAT works in conjunction with
ArcGIS and Access, allowing greater versatility and
enhanced functionality. Incorporation of ArcGIS allows
collection and maintenance of spatial data. Access allows
the collected data to be stored in a series of tables
to be used for data querying and reporting.
FEAT Forum
Spatial Dynamics (FEAT developers), have set up an Internet forum to share information about FEAT including how to download FEAT, features of the tool, development issues and questions, and general discussion topics.
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