Wildfire Management Technology Advancement Act of 2018

Wildfire Management Technology Advancement Act of 2018

This bill authorizes federal and state wildland firefighting agencies to operate unmanned aircraft systems (i.e., drones) in managing wildland fires.

The Departments of Agriculture and of the Interior shall:

• jointly develop and operate a tracking system to remotely locate the positions of fire resources assigned to federal type 1 wildland fire incident management teams;
• establish the Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program to assign air resource advisors to such a team managing a wildland fire;
• establish the Rapid Response Erosion Database to provide for the automatic incorporation of spatial data related to vegetation, soils, and elevation into burn severity maps;
• establish the Fire Danger Assessment System for predicting the locations of future wildfires in fire-prone areas; and
• study the feasibility of operating aircraft at night to manage wildland fires.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency may make grants to states to provide funding to certain at-risk communities for the cost-shared installation of reverse-911 systems.

The bill amends the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 to require the National Fire Data Center to gather and analyze additional information on fires, including all injuries sustained by firefighters that were treated by a doctor.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology to: (1) establish national teams to collect data following wildfires in the wildland-urban interface, and (2) implement a research plan for linking economic outcomes with wildfire mitigation.