The forest fire Lab opened in 1991, leading by Dr. Chau Chin Lin. The lab has three scientists who are studying fire danger rating and incident command system (ICS).
The fire danger rating system aims to predict the possibility of a forest fire occurring. In conjunction with the Taiwan Forestry Bureau (TFB), 35 field stations located in national forests have been set up to monitor fuel moisture. A fire hazard map modeled and mapped by the daily records from those field station. The information then is transmitted online to TFB, where it is processed in the prediction model, to produce a calculated fire risk on a scale of 1-5. This risk factor is returned to forest management offices, for use in their daily forest fire inspections. In future, satellite data from MODIS will be added to increase the accuracy and coverage of the system.
The ICS integrates forest fire behavior prediction technology with an fire suppression system. Each national forest represents an ICS team. They are activated in the event of a fire, and the system coordinates five levels of command: firefighters, fire captains, command team, command officers, external assistance. Having worked with the Forestry Bureau since 2001, forest fire research office has completed the design of the system and system training. It is now the new standard forest fire response system. The system will be updated with new technologies and sensing equipment in future, to guarantee functionality and cost-effectiveness.
A database of forest fires has also been established. Using MySQL and Mapserver, the database has records of forest fires in all of Taiwan from 1950-2008. These records are integrated with a geographic information system so the data can be searched by region and date, allowing for easy generation of statistics as a useful reference for forest fire management.