Overview

Wildfire Intelligence and Simulation Engine (W.I.S.E.) is modern wildfire simulation Engine (Formerly Known as Prometheus as a Service or PSaaS). Think of W.I.S.E. as a modelling engine.

W.I.S.E. is used operationally by the Govt of the Northwest Territories, Forest Management Division Headquarters, Fire Science Section to create a Standardized Growth Potential models which basically provide a best case and worst case scenario of 24 hours unrestricted growth based on current indexes and forecasted weather using a predetermined template.

The Government of the Northwest Territories is currently the lead agency, custodian and legal intellectual property rights holder of W.I.S.E..



Press:

Jan 19, 2023: Initial Public Open Source Release of WISE 1.0 Beta

Jan 19, 2023

The WISE Steering Committee, on behalf of the entire Project Team is proud to announce the initial release of WISE 1.0-Beta Open Source.

This monumental milestone has always been on our radar and after 15 long years, we have at long last arrived.

The core concepts of WISE were first cemented in 2007 at a Prometheus Fire Modelling course in Hinton Alberta when Franco Nogarin first met Cordy Tymstra and  Neal McLoughlin from the Government of Alberta (GOA) and Robert Bryce of Heartland Software Solutions (HSS) and the idea was introduced, discussed formally and dismissed as far too ambitious at the time, but Franco and Rob continued to play with the idea and discuss the potential every time they could.

It was further pushed along in 2012 when Franco Presented a poster on the potential of Prometheus automation on behalf of the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) at the Wildland Fire Conference in Halifax Nova Scotia. There Franco met Brett Moore (GOA) and Dan Thompson of the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) for the first time, both were supportive of the idea and the subsequent discussion on the potential convinced the GNWT to move forward.

In Early 2014, Franco and Neal worked out the legal rules of engagement for the GNWT to start a new project based off of Prometheus and the project was officially approved by the GOA and GNWT.

In June 2014 We began the work. With the very first contract between the GNWT and Robert Bryce of HSS (The developer of Prometheus) to build the initial proof of concept.

Many contracts, tons of work, about a half a million dollars and 8.5 years later We arrived here.

It has taken a lot to get here.

Winning people over to this idea was not easy. In the beginning the fire science community rejected this work as unimportant. We basically went on tour to drum up support for the concept and the community development ideas that went with it.

Financially, the development of WISE was not cheap. Nor was coming by the capital easy. This project would never have succeeded without its financial backing from the four founding agency partners:

  • The Government of the Northwest Territories
  • The Government of New Zealand (SCION Research)
  • The Government of Alberta
  • The Government of Saskatchewan

These agencies provided our project with continuous funding that allowed us to keep moving forward, keep the lights on and eventually arrive here today.

Then there is the “In-Kind” contributions, these folks have provided significant human resources, digital infrastructure, free coding and or code contributions to this project. Our champions there are:

  • The Government of the Northwest Territories
  • The Government of Alberta
  • The Canadian Forest Service
  • Heartland Software Solutions
  • The Government of British Columbia
  • The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre.

Our Project team has been meeting bi-monthly for a long time and this team has done a great job of supporting the Steering Committee in making this happen, a big thanks to our team! - the Active Project Team is:

Franco Nogarin (Government of the Northwest Territories)

Neal McLoughlin (Government of British Columbia)

Brett Moore (Canadian Forest Service)

Robert Bryce (Heartland Software Solutions)

Elizabeth Chapman (Government of Alberta)

Robert Kruus (Government of Saskatchewan)

Brad Armitage (Ember Research Services)

Jordan Evens (Canadian Forest Service)

Robert Jagodzinski (Canadian Forest Service)
Veronica Clifford (Government of New Zealand - SCION Research)

Wayne Schou (Government of New Zealand - SCION Research)

For more information on the WISE Project, you can:

Media:

Nov 18, 2022: WISE Webinar on YouTube (Canada Wildfire)

2022 Webinar

We held a public webinar in late 2022 to introduce W.I.S.E. to the public. The webinar recording (Courtesy of Canada Wildfire) is available on YouTube!

Wildfire Intelligence and Simulation Engine (W.I.S.E.) Project or WISE Project for short, provides a modern modeling framework that:
  • Speeds up modeling
  • Makes modeling scriptable
  • Provides batch, iteration and perturbation functionality.
  • Read and write open and standards based data.
  • Allow it to be integrated into other applications as a service.
  • Preserves and Leverages Prometheus Modeling Training and Experience.
  • Save on human resource effort and lower modeling costs
  • Free modelers from restrictions of modeling at a windows desktop Prometheus installation.
  • Allows for a totally custom user interface in language/platform of choice.
  • Give back to the Prometheus Community.
    • Learn more...