43 U.S.C. § 1748b–1 — Wildfire technology modernization

(a) Purpose. This section promotes the best available technology so wildfire responses are effective and cost-efficient, meet applicable protection goals, and make firefighters and the public safer.

(b) Definitions. (1) “Secretaries” means the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of the Interior. (2) “Secretary concerned” means the Secretary of Agriculture for Department of Agriculture activities and the Secretary of the Interior for Department of the Interior activities.

(c) Unmanned aircraft systems. (1) In this subsection, “unmanned aircraft” and “unmanned aircraft system” have the meanings given in 49 U.S.C. § 44801; this section does not define them. (2) Within 180 days after March 12, 2019, the Secretary, consulting the Secretary of Agriculture, must create or expand a research, development, and testing program. It must assess unmanned-aircraft technologies, including optionally piloted aircraft, across all wildland-fire-management operations, to speed their deployment and integration into the Secretaries’ operations. (3) While carrying out that program, the Secretaries, working with the Federal Aviation Administration, State wildland-fire agencies, and other relevant Federal agencies, must enter an agreement under which they develop consistent protocols and plans for using unmanned-aircraft technologies on wildland fires, including real-time maps showing where fires are located.

(d) Location systems for wildland firefighters. (1) Within 2 years after March 12, 2019, and subject to available appropriations, the Secretaries, working with State wildland-fire agencies, must jointly develop and operate a tracking system, called the “system” in this subsection. It must remotely locate fire resources for wildland firefighters and must cover at least all fire resources assigned to Federal type 1 wildland-fire incident-management teams. (2) The system must (A) use the most practical and effective technology available to the Secretaries to track an active resource remotely, such as GPS; (B) show each fire resource on the maps developed under subsection (c)(3); (C) operate continuously while firefighting personnel are assigned to the applicable Federal wildland fire; and (D) follow the terms and conditions the Secretary concerned finds necessary to implement it effectively. (3) Before operating the system, the Secretary concerned must conduct at least 2 pilot projects about its operation, management, and effectiveness, and review their results. The Secretary concerned must provide training and maintain a culture in which an employee, officer, or contractor does not rely on the system for safety. The Secretary concerned must establish procedures for collecting, storing, and transferring the subsection’s data to ensure data security and the privacy of wildland-fire personnel.

(e) Wildland-fire decision support. (1) To the maximum extent practicable, the Secretaries must ensure that their wildland-fire-management activities, and activities they conduct jointly with State wildland-fire agencies, comply with applicable incident-management objectives in a way that reduces firefighter exposure to the lowest necessary level and reduces the total cost of wildfire incidents. (2)(A) Working with State wildland-fire agencies, the Secretaries must create or expand a system that tracks and monitors management decisions made by the Secretaries or those State agencies. (B) The system must be able to alert the Secretaries when unusual costs are incurred; when a planned action would likely endanger a firefighter or fail to meet an applicable suppression or protection goal; or when a wildfire-management decision departs from an applicable Secretaries’ protocol, including paragraph (1), or from an applicable spatial fire-management plan or the Secretary concerned’s fire-management plan.

(f) Smoke projections. The Secretaries must establish the Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program. Under it, the Secretary concerned must, to the maximum extent practicable, assign at least 1 air-resource adviser to a type 1 incident-management team managing a Federal wildland fire, and may assign at least 1 to a type 2 team managing a wildland fire.

(g) Omitted.

(h) Rapid Response Erosion Database. (1) Consulting the NASA Administrator and the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretaries must establish and maintain the Rapid Response Erosion Database, called the “Database” here. (2)(A) The Secretaries must make the Database, including its original source code, web-based and free. (B) To the maximum extent practicable, it must automatically add spatial data about vegetation, soils, and elevation to an applicable map made by the Secretary concerned showing wildfire-caused changes in land cover and soil properties, and generate a composite map that the Secretary concerned can use to model how effective burned-area treatments would be in preventing flooding, erosion, and landslides under different weather conditions. (3) The Secretary concerned must use the Database, when applicable, to develop recommendations for emergency stabilization treatments or changes to drainage structures that protect values at risk after a wildland fire. (4) The Secretaries may share the Database and results from using it with any State or local-government unit.

(i) Predicting where wildfires will start. (1) Consulting NASA’s Administrator, the Secretary of Energy, and the Secretary of Commerce, and using capabilities and assets at the National Laboratories, the Secretaries must establish and maintain a system predicting future wildfire locations in fire-prone United States areas. (2) The system must be based on and seek to improve similar systems that existed on March 12, 2019, including the Fire Danger Assessment System. (3) Within 1 year after that date, the Secretaries must use the system as much as practicable to develop wildland-fire-potential forecasts. (4) They may share the system and its results with any State or local-government unit.

(j) Termination. The authority in this section ends 10 years after March 12, 2019.

(k) Savings clause. Nothing here requires the Secretary concerned to create a new program, system, or database to replace an existing one that meets this section’s objectives. Nothing prevents the Secretary concerned from using existing or future technology that is more efficient, safer, or better meets the needs of firefighters, other personnel, or the public, and that meets those objectives.