Conference: FIRE-NET: Fire Science Innovations through Research and Education (FIRE) Core Institute Workshop

The Fire Science Innovations through Research and Education (FIRE) program is a unique funding partnership that has supported individual research projects over a period of several years. The goal of this program is to create large-scale, cross-cutting breakthroughs to transform our understanding of wildland fire and provide urgently-needed solutions. The FIRE program portfolio represents a wide array of innovative projects and the individual projects are distributed across geographies, disciplines, and approaches. This project will enable collaboration among the many individual FIRE projects by hosting a workshop that enables FIRE project leaders and personnel to develop shared infrastructure and solutions. This project will bring together the FIRE portfolio to coordinate across projects, to support data and infrastructure needs, and to further leverage and integrate concepts, findings, and approaches. Applying the CORE Institute convergence research framework, the workshop and related activities will define shared agendas, identify research needs, and create innovation pathways to collaborate more effectively. Ultimately, this project will create the tools, connections, and processes needed to produce further actionable outcomes across FIRE projects. The workshop is designed in three stages, including a virtual preparation stage, an in-person workshop, and targeted follow-up activities to sustain momentum. The approach emphasizes hands-on collaboration and concrete action plans. It combines web-based and in-person sessions to foster collaboration among FIRE projects and broader communities. The workshop is organized around five tracks reflecting the research priorities emerging from the awarded projects. Outcomes include reports on priorities, collaboration opportunities, and infrastructure needs. The event aims to advance wildfire prediction, community resilience, post-fire recovery, and data standards. Research across all of the wildfire lifecycle stages is included for comprehensive impact. Shared infrastructure will also add value and synergies across projects, such as cyberinfrastructure support and a public repository for wildfire research data and data products. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.