WFDSS is Open for Business!

Today, March 26th, 2025, the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) NextGen officially became the authoritative system of record for decisions on active federal wildland fire incidents.

WFDSS integrates various applications used to manage incidents into a single risk-informed, collaborative system to streamline the analysis and reporting process.

Why WFDSS NextGen?

WFDSS Next Gen is designed to improve the user experiencing by being Scalable, Map-Focused and Intuitive, while providing users with authoritative data and “as near to” real-time information as possible to facilitate informed and rapid decision making. WFDSS NextGen will be utilizing services as the primary method for displaying spatial data, populating weather data throughout the application, running fire behavior analyses and displaying Spatial Fire Planning data. Utilizing services gives WFDSS NextGen much more flexibility on the data it provides to the end user while ensuring that data is the most up to date and accurate information available.

The Production environment of WFDSS Classic has become read-only.
Users can view or download content.

WFDSS Classic Homepage will direct users to the WFDSS NextGen Homepage.

The Training environment of WFDSS Classic will remain live until approximately April 12th to support planned training.

Application Access and Role requests are being processed by Geographic Area Editors, with the support of the WFM RD&A. User access and roles for WFDSS NextGen PROD are independent of all other application instances.

Users must have a role AND login to the WFDSS application to be added to any incident as a Collaborator and to populate the User Search function.

The Training environment of WFDSS NextGen (EDU) should be utilized for pre-season training.

Explore the User Support Resources!

Click on the images or topics below to be redirected

WFDSS Homepage

WFDSS Tutorial Playlist

System Access

Roles

User Profile

User Interface Orientation

Getting Help

Request access and roles for EDU and PROD through the Wildland Fire Application Portal (FAMAuth)
Users requesting roles and access should view the application help and work with your GAE to ensure that you are requesting the proper role for your needs.
Check out the WFDSS NextGen Frequently Asked Questions
Register for the Remote Incident Support Team (RIST) workshop (May 2025)
Watch the recording of the Agency Administrator Refresher
Users can self-register for the course Agency Administrator WFDSS Refresher Webinar 2025 on the Wildland Fire Wildland Fire Learning Portal Portal to obtain a certificate.

Along with the monthly distribution of this newsletter, we'll begin delivering weekly, hour-long webinars consisting of a system- or feature-related demo followed by user Q&A.

WFDSS NG General Overview (recording)

WFDSS NG Account Management (recording)

WFDSS NG Roles and Permissions (recording)

Planning for the Transition (recording)

Strategy Overview (recording)

Open Office Hours - March 26 1300-1400 MTN

Office Hours are Moving!

As we move into the new application, we are also changing up the way that we host the office hours.

The meeting will be hosted in MS Teams as a recurring meeting - Wednesdays at 1300-1400 MTN. This will allow us to maintain an open chat where users can ask and answer questions.

Join here!

The tentative schedule for April Office Hours topics:

April 2	What's Different Classic - NG comparison
April 9	Open Office Hours
April 16	Map Basics
April 23	Decision Approval
April 30	Analysis Basics

What will happen to the information stored in WFDSS Classic?

For all incidents where there is a published decision or relative risk OR there is an analysis in Review or Completed status, the following information will be packaged up to be downloaded through the WFDSS NextGen interface:

Published decisions (PDF format)
Relative Risk and Organizational Assessments
Incident shapes (Planning areas, perimeters, M.A.P.'s, Incident Objective shapes, Point of Interest shapes).
Analysis Reports for completed analyses
Analysis shapes (ignitions, barriers, masks)
Incident Content Library materials (images, map captures, etc.) .
Incident History

As part of the archiving process for the current version of the WFDSS application, this incident information and all other data that is valuable for historical, legal, and regulatory reasons will be extracted and stored in a database accessible through the Data Warehouse.

Data will not be retained from the Training environment of WFDSS Classic.