FMIS: a decision support system for forest fire prevention and fighting

This paper presents a decision support system for managers in charge of process monitoring, this domain being representative of rapidly increasing emergencies. Designing such a system means combining tasks: automate data processing; give the user efficient access to all relevant data; and synthesize pertinent information. Data used for decisions come from several independent sources. The authors introduce the concept of a scenario associated with every kind of information managed by this system, which describes the tasks related with this information and their scheduling. The system architecture is built around the association of a reactive database and a real-time information manager, whose task is to follow the scenarios describing the processes to trigger for all incoming data. This architecture, based on specifications and knowledge, allows autonomous behavior of the system in order to monitor, update and display all information needed for the user´s decisions. It uses a declarative approach, i.e. it separates what is application dependent (data, scenarios and processes) from what is generic, and can be used for other applications. The Fire Management Information System is an application dedicated to forest fire prevention and fighting, partially funded by the European Research Programme for Environmental Protection