Location & Intelligence Sharing

Wildland firefighters must maintain situational awareness or risk their safety and effectiveness. Situational awareness requires an understanding of the location of the firefighter themself, the locations of other firefighters, suppression vehicles, aircraft, and incident information. When on foot and away from vehicles, the standard method for communicating this information is to speak location information over a two-way radio, which leaves substantial room for error and misunderstanding, especially while under stress.

The Dingell Act of 2019 mandated all resource locations on Federal incidents shall be known. As such, Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) developed and implemented a near real-time resource location system. This system is for Federal firefighters and incident responders, as well as interagency partners, who wish to participate, and it establishes a procedure for collection, storage, and integration of interagency resource locations. WFTAK is not intended for disciplinary actions and users can disable tracking by closing the Team Awareness Kit (TAK) application.