1. Introduction

Fire Analysis and Assessment (FAA) discipline collects vegetation fire information and transforms it to knowledge. This knowledge is used during emergencies to provide guidance and direction for decision-making on strategical, tactical and operational fire management levels.

The FAA is a relatively new discipline used by some organisations within Europe and globally. While there is not a standard way to define the FAA discipline, there are common tasks, competencies, and skills developed by the FAA discipline that can be harmonised.

Fire Analysis and Assessment (FAA) capacities are scattered across different levels (scales of application):

– Fire analysis competencies and skills for basic firefighters, intermediate commanders, fire planners, incident commanders, etc. all profiles in fire management. These sets of skills and competencies provide a better situation awareness and an improved way to make decisions.

– Specialist profiles, known generically as ‘Fire Analyst’, such as ‘Long-term Fire Analyst’, ‘Tactical Analyst’, ‘Fire Analyst- planning’ ‘Fire Analysis Branch Director’, among others.

Fire Analysis (FAA) can be performed on the ground, in an incident command post, in a coordination centre or as external assistance.

Fire Analysts (FA), being specialist profiles, can be embedded in the forest fires response in different ways. For example, on an ICS type structure FA can be found (Figure 1):

– Within the Command Staff, to support the Incident Commander and its General Staff in decision-making and communication.

– In the Planning Section, to assist the Planning Chief in managing information and/or in building a shared understanding of the scenario, framing strategical and tactical decisions and supervising its evolution, for the current and next operative period.

– In the Operations Section, as a Functional Branch or Division, for a high degree of linkage and coordination between fire analysis and operational tactics, especially in high-paced and high-impact scenarios.

– A separate General Staff Section, when highly specialized, coordinated

analysis performed from different positions is critical to reduce the separation between decision-making and a changing reality, especially in front of uncertain and complex scenarios.

– Outside the incident area, in a coordination or dispatching centre, managing information and assessment on new alarms, prioritizing and balancing considering the whole scenario, and providing remote assessment to specific managed incidents.

Figure 1. Diagram of the ICS showing that the fire analyst can be in different places in the organisational chart depending. Source: CFRS adapted from FEMA [1].

All these different skills and profiles interact in different ways within teams or groups, both inside an agency or in a multiagency framework.

Nowadays, different ‘fire vegetation response’ agencies have decided to invest in incorporating different competencies and profiles of fire analysis4 .

The capacity of any agency to integrate FAA changes depends on the frequency of the fire generations [2] faced, which implies the frequency of challenging scenarios faced during the last years. Nevertheless, it also depends on the legal and sociocultural context and on the structure of the teams in the organisation, etc. So, each agency trains and practices different competencies and skills to the different profiles (firefighters; fire bosses, leaders, supervisors, chiefs, commanders; dispatching specialists; pilots; fire prevention and management planners, etc.). Agencies promote specialist profiles in their ranks and how they interact with others in different fire management scenarios.

Extensive national and organisational differences do not allow to standardize competencies on FAA across European Firefighting Agencies. The great diversity and

4 Conclusion from the meetings and activities carried out for the development of this guide.