WFTAK Overview

The 2019 Dingell Act required that the USDA and DOI develop a tracking system to remotely locate the positions of wildland firefighters. The Forest Service has scoped, piloted, and considered industry feedback to help develop Dynamic Automated Resource Tracking (DART) to meet and exceed the requirements of the Act signed into law.

During the scoping for DART, it became clear that to be successful, a Common Operating Picture (COP) needed to be developed to increase situational awareness.  The Team Awareness Kit (TAK) was selected due to its ability to display real-time resource locations, send locations, ingest other data feeds, overlay incident maps, and view various forms of media including imagery and video.  

TAK has been under continuous development by the US Department of Defense and other US federal government agencies since 2010. TAK was originally developed by the US Air Force Research Laboratory to provide improved situational awareness to US Special Forces, and is now used throughout the US military, allied armed forces, and the federal government. 

An intergovernmental group known as the TAK Product Center develops and maintains the core TAK apps, and provides community members the ability to develop on TAK through plugins and integrations.