Geospatial Analytics for the Fire Management Offices of the National Capital, Northeast, and Southeast Regions of the National Park Service | P17AS00670

Opportunity Information: Apply for P17AS00670

This grant opportunity, titled "Geospatial Analytics for the Fire Management Offices of the National Capital, Northeast, and Southeast Regions of the National Park Service" (Funding Opportunity Number P17AS00670), is a Department of the Interior, National Park Service project focused on turning existing fire-related geospatial data into practical performance metrics that can help inform fire management decisions. It is offered as a discretionary cooperative agreement under the Natural Resources funding activity category (CFDA 15.945). The National Park Service fire programs in the Southeast, Northeast, and National Capital Regions have already collected substantial spatial datasets, particularly data describing where wildfires started, how far they spread (fire extent), and the boundaries of fuels treatments (treatment perimeters). The central purpose of the project is to analyze these datasets and evaluate how useful they are for addressing real operational and strategic needs within fire management offices.

A key theme of the opportunity is measurement and decision support rather than basic data collection. The work is intended to translate raw mapped fire and fuels-treatment information into performance metrics, meaning quantifiable indicators that can be used to assess program outcomes, effectiveness, and trends over time. In practice, this implies tasks such as organizing and cleaning existing spatial layers, confirming their completeness and consistency, and then developing ways to summarize them into meaningful indicators. Examples of the kinds of questions this type of effort often supports include how frequently fires occur in certain vegetation types or management units, whether fuels treatments overlap with or influence subsequent wildfire behavior and impacts, and how treatments contribute to meeting broader land management objectives. The opportunity text also signals that the analysis will be exploratory and iterative: as the data are examined, additional questions beyond the initially outlined tasks may emerge, and the project is expected to be flexible enough to incorporate those new management-driven questions.

Another major component is integration of the NPS fire datasets with other relevant datasets and model outputs to enhance the usefulness of the metrics. The notice specifically mentions examples such as Fire Regime Condition Class (often used to describe departure from historical fire regimes and ecological conditions), StarFIRE, and Estimated Value Acres Burned, indicating an emphasis on combining multiple sources to build a more complete picture of risk, condition, and outcomes. This kind of integration typically allows managers to move from simple descriptive mapping (where fires happened and where treatments occurred) to evaluative and comparative metrics (how outcomes differ by ecological condition class, potential values at risk, modeled hazard, or other prioritization frameworks). The outcome is likely intended to be a set of analytic products that can be reused and updated, such as repeatable GIS workflows, dashboards, standardized reporting tables, or regionwide metric definitions that can support annual reporting and planning.

The funding details indicate an award ceiling of $99,875, with the instrument type being a cooperative agreement, which generally implies meaningful involvement by the federal partner during the project rather than a fully independent contractor-style relationship. Eligible applicants include public and state-controlled institutions of higher education and other eligible entities as clarified in the full notice. The opportunity was created on August 16, 2017, with an original closing date of August 26, 2017. Even though the posting lists "Expected Awards: 0," the broader context reads like a targeted project announcement where the agency is seeking a partner to conduct specific geospatial analytic work in collaboration with NPS fire staff. Overall, the opportunity is best understood as a short, focused applied analytics project: take existing NPS fire and fuels spatial records, test and improve their ability to answer management questions, and produce defensible, repeatable performance metrics that can help the National Capital, Northeast, and Southeast Region fire programs evaluate treatments and wildfire outcomes and communicate results.

• The Department of the Interior, National Park Service in the natural resources sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Geospatial Analytics for the Fire Management Offices of the National Capital, Northeast, and Southeast Regions of the National Park Service" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 15.945.
• This funding opportunity was created on Aug 16, 2017.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Aug 26, 2017. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $99,875.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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