Planning-ready wildfire screening for local resilience work.
BurnLens is a public-interest initiative that turns frequently updated satellite imagery and authoritative fire information into clear, planning-ready materials for county, city, and community partners.
- One pilot jurisdiction: Deschutes County, Oregon
- One defined planning geography and corridor context
- One primary task: evacuation-access and exposure screening
- One primary user: county or city planning/resilience practitioner
- One planning-ready delivery bundle for review, coordination, and discussion
About
A mission-driven workflow built for public benefit.
BurnLens exists for the gap between abundant wildfire data and usable planning products. Public agencies and resilience partners can access hazard layers, fire information, and imagery, but often still need a practical way to turn those inputs into maps, memos, and review materials that can support real planning conversations.
Instead of presenting itself as a broad wildfire platform, BurnLens is designed to package current fire context into materials that are easier to interpret, circulate, and use in local resilience work.
What partners receive
- • GIS-ready raster and vector outputs
- • Annotated maps for review and meetings
- • Plain-language decision-support memos
- • Metadata and provenance documentation
- • Confidence and limitations notes
- • Fit-for-use language with clear boundaries
Who BurnLens serves first
- • County or city planning and resilience practitioners
- • GIS and emergency planning staff
- • Community resilience and technical-assistance partners
- • Mission-aligned organizations supporting wildfire adaptation and grant readiness
What it is not
- • Not incident command
- • Not evacuation orders or emergency direction
- • Not parcel-level enforcement
- • Not a utility-grade operational system
How it works
A simple workflow for turning current fire context into something usable.
Define the planning geography
Start with one named community-and-corridor area where wildfire relevance, access constraints, and public-interest value are clear.
Assemble current fire context
Combine frequently updated satellite imagery, authoritative fire information, and required local overlays into one bounded screening package.
Review access and exposure
Bring roads, buildings, parcels, critical facilities, and planning boundaries together so local teams can review the area as a whole.
Produce a planning-ready package
Deliver an annotated map, GIS-ready outputs, a plain-language memo, provenance, and confidence notes that can be shared without requiring specialist interpretation.
Pilot
Deschutes County Phase 0 pilot.
The first phase of BurnLens is focused on one defined planning geography in Deschutes County, Oregon. The purpose of the pilot is to test whether a planning-readable wildfire screening package is useful enough to support county or city decision work in a real local context.
Fiscal sponsorship
Built for mission-aligned sponsorship and public-interest support.
BurnLens is being developed as a public-interest initiative rather than a speculative software platform. Fiscal sponsorship would provide the legal, financial, and administrative infrastructure needed to receive charitable support, maintain responsible oversight, and keep the work focused on public benefit.
Early support would help fund a bounded Phase 0 pilot: workflow development, map and memo packaging, external review, documentation, and sponsor-ready reporting.
Responsible use
Screening and planning support only.
BurnLens is intended for screening, briefing, and planning coordination use. It is not incident command, not evacuation orders or emergency direction, not parcel-level enforcement, and not a substitute for authoritative county, fire-service, emergency-management, or official hazard products.
When BurnLens outputs differ from authoritative sources, the authoritative source governs.
Contact
Interested in the pilot, review process, or sponsorship fit?
We welcome conversations with county and city partners, resilience organizations, potential reviewers, and mission-aligned fiscal sponsors interested in practical wildfire planning support.