Spatial decision support and information management application to wildland fire prevention The WILFRIED System

This paper presents an integrated Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS), called WILFRIED, which is designed to fit the requirements of managers in charge of wildland fire prevention and fighting. To achieve decision support, the system combines tasks: it gives the user an efficient access to relevant data, synthesizes pertinent information (meteorology, topography, vegetation) and automates repetitive tasks (compute the wind field every two hours for example). The methodology that we use associates in the same computer software a set of tools (Data Base System, Geographic Information System, simulation models, user interface) in order to help the user with his decisionmaking job for complex problem solving. We present the WILFRIED system, we describe in particular the cooperation between various actors which are managed by an Information Manager linked with a Data Base Management System. Then we present the system components and its architecture.