Fire Tracker needs an about this data page

[chrislkeller]

Need to explain methodology, where the data is coming from, what is not included and that this information should be used to make decisions that could cost you your home.

What the L.A. Times Uses on a similar project:

Note: Based on official fire mapping sources that show rough footprints of actively burning wildfires. Perimeter updates take at least several hours to produce and may be based on satellite heat detection, which is approximate. Zooming into specific locations may produce misleading information. The Times map requires manual updates, which may be intermittent, so people in need of urgent information about road closures and evacuations are advised to keep abreast of communications from fire officials.

Advice from an expert:

Being Upfront with Users

"Whatever you end up doing, you should be clear with your site’s users about the data limitations and gotchas. In the above chicagocrime.org example, I was upfront with users about the freshness, or lack thereof: for any crime older than 90 days, I displayed a note saying it might be incorrect, because the record was no longer on the CPD site for verification. (In this case, they could go to the police department in person to find the most up-to-date information about that crime.) Also, if your app does aggregation or attempts to derive trends or patterns, things get riskier, and you should be particularly open about the shortcomings of your methods.

Any application that repurposes data from another source has an obligation to explain how it gets the data. I highly urge you to be upfront with your users about which parts of the data might be out of date, how often it’s updated, which bits of the data are updated (only recent records? everything?) and any other peculiarities about your process. The more transparent you are about it, the better."

And some more

The life of your data matters. You have to ask yourself, Is it useful forever? Does it become harmful after a set time? We had to confront the real impact of deleting mugs after 60 days. People share them, potentially lengthening their lifetime long after they’ve fallen off the homepage. Delete them and that URL goes away.

[chrislkeller]

Fire Tracker, KPCC's tool for following & researching California wildfires, contains fire information displayed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection -- also known as CalFire -- which protects more than 31 million acres of California's privately-owned wildlands and provides emergency services in 36 of the State's 58 counties.

About the data

• Data and information contained in Fire Tracker is updated three times a day and is based on the latest updates from CalFire and information from the U.S. Forest Service's InciWeb Incident Information System. As such, Fire Tracker is a news tool and does not contain the latest information from emergency management officials, nor should it be used to make decisions that affect you and your family.
• Mapped locations are based on the approximate location of the fire as released by CalFire and should not be used to make decisions that affect you and your family.
• Data for fires that have reached 100 percent containment may contain inaccuracies.
• In cases where data for a particular item is not available or not clear, we display it as "n/a", or not available.
• The 2012 aggregate data is based on data from the CalFire archives.
• The 2013 aggregate data is based on the latest update from CalFire.
• Air quality data is periodically updated based on AirNow ratings and based on an approximate zipcode.

[billofrights]

New CSS has been checked back in. See here for markup syntax: http://review.jonwhitestudio.com/kpcc/firetracker/about.html

[chrislkeller]

From colleagues:

At the top you explain CalFire "protects more than 31 million acres of California's privately-owned wildlands and provides emergency services in 36 of the State's 58 counties."

I think you could also use that space to explain how Forest Service is different than CalFire and maybe mention what happens to the other 22 counties.

I think "air quality data is manually pulled from AirNow", sounds kinda jargony.

---

Something I would include in the methodology, if you know it, is how big does something have to be for CalFire to consider it a fire. I would also add what lands the U.S. Fire Service covers since you have it for the other agencies.

[frankreporting]

How much more work would this take? Seems like it's all but ready to go?

[chrislkeller]

Yeah, and it was live at launch... Perhaps it just needs a refresh or fresh eyes?