CWA 18017:2023

Management of forest fire incidents - SITAC-based symbology

Scope

This document proposes a set of standardized symbols to be agreed upon and adopted by the responsible public safety agencies and more specifically by the organizations involved in wildfire management in an optimally coordinated approach (particularly when considering a cross border context). Such symbology will enable the visual communication of the operational and field information that fire commanders exchange during firefighting operations, displayed on a geographical background, to effectively support the coordination and planning of the response activities. Hence, adopting such symbology will expectedly improve the understanding of the situation by the involved agencies, based on a common visualization approach concerning the information sharing among field actors from different countries, jointly operating in the theatre.
The set of symbols encompassed the characteristics of the area of operations, the propagation of the fire front, the intervention measures/available equipment and the actions that need to be taken.
The symbology proposed in this document is based on SITAC, a set of symbols developed by the French Fire Service (Sapeur Pompiers), which is currently operationally adopted by the "Corpo Nazionale dei Vigili del Fuoco (CNVVF)" in Italy and a number of other fire services in EU Member States.