Reference · built on requestCommons signalHazards & public safety

InciWeb

Interagency incident summaries and news for US wildfires and other events from InciWeb, as national RSS feeds and a KML file.

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About

InciWeb is an interagency all-risk incident information management system. It was built to give the public a single source of incident information and to give public affairs staff a standardized reporting tool, and supporting systems automate delivery of that information to remote sources. The Feeds page offers two national RSS 2.0 feeds, National Incidents and National Incident Publications, and a Google Earth feed of placemarks with points of origin, incident summary details and, in some cases, perimeter data.

Through Fibric, an operator reads the feeds, matches incidents to your states and sites, and proposes a notice or a roster check for a person to approve.

This is a reference listing. It documents what Fibric would read from InciWeb and what it could propose, based on the publisher's published interfaces. Fibric builds it under a managed deployment when you request it; selecting it here installs nothing.

Inputs

  • National Incidents RSS 2.0 at /incidents/rss.xml: one item per incident with title, link, description, pubDate, dc:creator and guid
  • Incident descriptions carrying a last-updated date, incident type, responsible unit, state, latitude and longitude, and an Incident Overview narrative
  • National Incident Publications RSS 2.0 at /incident-publication/rss.xml for news and announcements
  • Google Earth placemarks at /feeds/maps/placemarks.kml: one Folder and Placemark per incident with name, description, LookAt and Point coordinates
  • A link per item to the incident-information page on inciweb.wildfire.gov

Proposed actions

Read-only. This feed informs operators; it changes nothing.

Proposed actions are target capabilities. Every action runs propose-first and needs a validated deployment and the appropriate permissions.

What you can build

  • Notify sites in a state with a new incident

    Match new National Incidents items to your states and site coordinates and draft a notice with the incident title, unit and link for a manager to send.

    With Severe Weather Notice

  • Track evacuation wording for a site

    Watch the Incident Overview text of incidents near a site for evacuation language and propose a roster check, leaving a record of who confirmed.

    With Evacuation Roster

  • Pause outdoor hot work near an incident

    When a placemark falls within your set distance of a site, propose that hot-work permits there wait, with the incident page linked for the approver.

    With Hot Work Permit

  • Digest new publications each morning

    Collect items from National Incident Publications since yesterday for incidents in your states and add them to the morning brief.

    With Morning Brief

Requirements

  • An RSS 2.0 parser and a KML parser, since descriptions are prose blocks separated by dashes rather than structured fields
  • Rules to extract type, unit, state and coordinates from the description text, which gives coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds
  • A poller, since the feeds are files and InciWeb documents no update interval or change notification
  • A list of your states and site coordinates to match against incident coordinates
Authentication
None. The RSS and KML feeds are public files; no key, account or registration is documented.

Limits

  • The feeds are national; no per-state or per-incident feed is documented on the Feeds page
  • Acres and containment are not separate fields; they appear only when written into the Incident Overview narrative
  • InciWeb states its information is for information purposes only and that fire perimeters and points are approximations
  • Placemarks carry no ExtendedData; the KML description holds a short note and a link

Access and pricing

Reference listing. Public feed access is separate from Fibric integration. If you request this feed, your quote covers the build, usage, and support.

Request InciWeb ↗

Questions and answers

What do the InciWeb feeds contain?
The National Incidents feed lists incident summaries. The National Incident Publications feed lists news and announcements. The Google Earth Network Link displays points of origin, incident summary information and in some cases perimeter data, and is automatically updated as data is entered into InciWeb.
How often do the feeds update?
InciWeb publishes no interval. The Feeds page says the Google Earth data is automatically updated as data is entered into InciWeb, and each RSS item carries a pubDate and a last-updated date in its description.
What are the terms of use?
InciWeb states its RSS feeds are provided free of charge for commercial and non-commercial use by individuals or organizations and may be displayed on your website. Information on the site is for information purposes only.
Ask about InciWeb

Ask about the capabilities and requirements in this listing.

For project-specific requirements, contact Fibric.

This Commons signal listing is developed, published, and supported by Fibric. It reads public data published by InciWeb, Incident Information System (inciweb.wildfire.gov). Upstream agencies and projects are the property of their respective owners, who are not affiliated with Fibric and do not sponsor or endorse this listing. Trademark policy