De. Terry Egan, Manager, Mitigation, Analysis & Plans Unut, Emergency Management Division, ‘Washington State) Military Depastment, discussed the challenges of applying Earth observation data to hazands in his state, Emergency managers provide predisaster alerts and wamings, coordinate resources in césaster or emergency circumstances, assist in disaster planning, assist in isaster exercises, and grant financial aid to locabities. In a disaster situation, emeigency managers are the center and leadets of ‘mass activity. The more information an emeency manager has to wok with, the mote prepared the manager vill be to handle the event Unfouunately, emewgency managers ate often constrained in ublising Basth observation data because they lack adequate sesouces Many who wodk in emergency management ate not trained to anulyze Earth observation data, nor do they have the time, energy, or funding to integrate observation systems into their work products, Emergency managers need real time dita, high tesofution images, true-color imagery, and user-fiiendly, site specific data packages, Emergency managers need the assistance of remote sensing experts to locate a disaster event. Egan sees a need for federal goverment funding for state and local emergency management applications in vemote sensing. Washington State has received a three-year grant from NASA. that aims to help emergency ‘managers use remote sensing products to addvess hazard planning and disaster mstigation. They have also setained the assistance of the University of Washington’s semote sensing lab for taining to use remote sensing data for emergency management. Washington has been able to use pasmemshups such, as these to leverage resousces. (See NRC, 2003 for a discussion of using remote sensing in state and local government) Egan reported on data integration successes in Washington State with the use of LANDSAT (@USS. satellite used for observing Eatth’s land surface), Advanced Very High Resolution Raciometer (AVHRR), and Modemate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data combined with state, local and teibal data Dr. Susan Conard, Vegetation Management and Protection Research, USDA Forest Sewvies, discussed gaps in wildfixe disaster management. She highlighted citical issues related to wildfire in an integrated Easth observation system. Her work involves field reference data, LANDFIRE. groguiphic infoomation system analysis, methods, and map deliverables, Fedeial agencies spend about $1.6 bilion om fise suppression for the approximately S4 milion acves of federa! land that burrs annually IBOS data helps in providing a baseline for monitosing tsends, measuring effects of natural disturbances and fire management actinty, and devising plans and building predictive models. EOS data is used in fuel classifications, fuel condition measures, fire hazard threat measurement, in identifying resousce values atsisk from fire in building basic data ayers, and in mapping wildland fire cecumence. Fire weather inputs, landscape mapping, fise behavior models and behavios, infiastmactare cata, and dats on the uiban/wildland interface all draw from EOS in vanous ways, Challenges of using IEOS data for wildfixe management include linking data across scales, collecting vanious types of data over vasious time petlods and with varying spatial resolutions. The continuity of observations is sometimes interupted when satellites move out of sange. Seasonal factors, fice activity pesiods, incident management demands, five sevesity and smoke haze sometimes