# FLARE: Wildfire intelligence to anticipate, analyze and act

A local, self-contained HTML data story about Wheeler County and Crosswhite,
July 13-16, 2026, with FLARE FireOutlook v11 and three USGS fire-danger products.

## Open and Share

For the BRIDGE Insights integration, see [REPLIT_HANDOFF.md](REPLIT_HANDOFF.md).
It includes a ready-to-paste Replit request, card details, hosting notes,
and acceptance checks. The story is packaged without local QA output or caches.

Open `index.html`. Keep the `assets` and `data` directories beside it.
No install, API key, internet connection, or server is required for the story.
External source links open the corresponding organizations' websites.

The folder can also be served unchanged at a subdirectory of a website.
Use relative paths as supplied. All graphics, icons, and numerical data are local.
The article includes linked county zoom/pan, synchronized date controls,
date playback, a Crosswhite comparison divider, product selectors, an
interactive 19-day chart, original image lightboxes, source tables, and methods.
It respects reduced-motion settings and includes keyboard-accessible controls.
The county and Crosswhite comparisons include light geographic basemaps,
independent forecast-opacity controls, and fixed boundary/origin overlays.
An Oregon locator places the study area in its regional setting.
The hero identifies the colored study footprint as Wheeler County and separates
the county's solid boundary from Crosswhite's dashed early fire perimeter.
The hero and interactive maps open in category view: Minimal, Low, Moderate,
High, Very high, Extreme, and Unavailable. Crosswhite's origin readout leads
with its category. The optional Index view and origin disclosure retain the
underlying values. The category guide includes all seven codes and exact ranges.
Opening product language draws on the supplied `ARTH_FLARE_final_final.pptx`
presentation. The case study remains a historical FireOutlook comparison.

## Dashboard Workflow

The "In practice" section uses original local-dashboard captures to connect
Anticipate, Analyze, and Act. Prominent Next buttons above and below the
dashboard advance through the three steps; the last step offers Start again.
Previous arrows and direct tab selection remain available. The tabs support
arrow keys, Home/End, image enlargement, reduced motion, and mobile layouts. Images are bundled;
the published story makes no requests to localhost or the dashboard API.

- Anticipate: Wheeler County's July 15 outlook selected in the July 14 replay.
- Analyze: thermal activity, NDVI/NDMI daily composites, and outlook history.
- Act: the July 15, 7:56 p.m. PDT regional watchlist and its context map.

Captures were taken October 16, 2026 from `http://127.0.0.1:5190/`.
`data/dashboard-captures.json` retains view URLs, dates, and image hashes.
The dashboard reports the share of eligible scored burnable pixels at or
above 0.70; the article's county figures are area-weighted over the entire
county for stored codes 5 and 6 (Very high or Extreme). Keep the denominator
distinction when quoting. Authentic dashboard screenshots retain their original
numerical scales; an accompanying guide explains FireOutlook categories.
Dashboard vegetation values are daily composites of five-minute observations.
Thermal tracks are observed heat signatures, with reference-match status
retained; the case-study perimeter and discovery record remain NIFC/WFIGS data.
These views demonstrate a historical workflow and do not establish that the
displayed dashboard was issued operationally during the July event.

## Evidence

Source analysis: https://github.com/ManjuSmriti/flare-oregon-sample/tree/5e8e208/outlook

- `data/story-data.json`: unrounded calculated statistics, map scales and point values.
- `data/wheeler-daily-area.csv`: all 19 dates, July 3-21.
- `data/usgs-county-summary.csv`: four-day county statistics for WFPI, WFSP and WLFP.
- `data/provenance.json`: source metadata, checksum manifest, map and category conventions.
- `assets/wheeler-actual-scale-matrix.png`: unchanged source county comparison.
- `assets/crosswhite-perimeter-bounds-matrix.png`: unchanged source close-up comparison.

The headline area percentages use stored category codes 5 and 6, partial-cell
overlap weights in EPSG:5070, and the whole county as denominator. They include
the 0.70 lower boundary. New `very_high_extreme_area_*` fields supply the article
and chart. Original `high_area_*` fields retain the strict > float32(0.70)
calculation for reproducibility. The July 13-16 rounded percentages are unchanged.
Missing FLARE coverage (2.238%) is not counted as low danger. Median full-cell
areas are 0.1216317506 km2 for FLARE and 1.0021677712 km2 for the USGS products.
The 8.2394 ratio is a ratio of cell areas, not accuracy or linear resolution.

Crosswhite's NIFC discovery timestamp converts to July 15, 2026, 5:51:54 p.m.
PDT. The same early perimeter timestamped July 16, 9:25 a.m. PDT appears on
all comparison dates. It is a later reference, not a daily spread sequence.
Nearest-cell point values come from a FLARE cell center approximately 216 m
from the NIFC initial coordinates, not the perimeter centroid.

The analysis uses replay fields. FLARE's assigned schedule is 03Z issue and
12Z-to-12Z validity. USGS Day 1 archive dates are verified, but exact issue
hours are unavailable. No matched-issuance or comparative forecast-skill
claim is made. FLARE categories were revised October 15, 2026; the maps read
those stored categories. Original index and coordinate values were preserved.

## Rebuild Figures and Tables

Python dependencies: numpy, pandas, xarray, netCDF4, shapely >= 2, pyproj,
matplotlib, cartopy, IPython. The source outlook folder supplies its
`examples/outlook.py` and `examples/fire_comparisons.py`, native daily NetCDF
files, USGS numerical caches, Census county geometry, and NIFC geometry.
Place the two original matrix PNGs in the analysis `output` folder, two
directories above the source `outlook` folder.

```sh
python scripts/build_story_assets.py /path/to/analysis/output/flare-outlook-git-upload/outlook
```

The builder reads source arrays without modifying them, verifies the geographic
grid across all dates, checks county coverage and the four source statistics,
retains original cell values, and regenerates local assets and metadata.
Full map cell footprints are drawn in EPSG:5070. Browser zoom enlarges them
without introducing new spatial data.

Basemap generation also uses requests and Pillow. The first build downloads
three bounded USGS Topo exports directly in EPSG:5070. The requested extent,
returned projection and extent, image size, and nonblank content are checked.
`data/basemaps/` retains the original exports, checksums, source attribution,
and request records for offline rebuilds. The display uses light grayscale.
These current geographic reference images accompany the historical forecasts.
Forecast arrays and native cell geometry remain unchanged. The initial opacity
is 72%; both sides share an opacity setting and retain synchronized zoom.

## Browser Verification

With Playwright and its Chromium browser installed, run:

```sh
node scripts/verify_story.mjs
```

Optional environment variables `PLAYWRIGHT_MODULE` and `PLAYWRIGHT_EXECUTABLE`
select an existing library and Chromium executable. The checks exercise all
dates and USGS products, category/index displays, continuous linked zoom,
the comparison divider, playback, original-figure dialogs, numerical readouts,
and image loading. Screenshots and results are written to `.qa/`.

## Credits and Rights

FLARE: Manju Smriti, BRIDGE - Research and Policy Foundation, ARTH GEO Intelligence.
USGS: WFPI, WFSP, WLFP. NIFC/WFIGS: incident origin and early perimeter.
U.S. Census Bureau: BAS 2026 Wheeler County boundary. Lucide: ISC license,
retained in `assets/LUCIDE-LICENSE`.
Geographic basemap: USGS The National Map, USGS Topo service at
https://basemap.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/USGSTopo/MapServer.
Full provider credits and retrieval timestamps are retained in `data/basemaps/`.

The FLARE source declares CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Retain attribution and verify reuse
permissions before redistribution or commercial use. The source matrices are
included without modification. Newly rendered story graphics are derived
visualizations requested by the research owner.