In February, fire departments in and near Amarillo, Texas, contended with the Willow Creek and Tanglewood Complex fires, two wildland-urban interface (WUI) incidents that destroyed 70 homes, burned more than 25,000 acres and caused nearly $6 million in property damage. To study the events, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Texas Forest Service sent teams on a three-week reconnaissance mission, during which they deployed for the first time a NIST-developed, two-tiered WUI data-collection methodology. The data as well as the agencies’ findings now are available online.

The two agencies gathered about 163 GB of data and more than 29,000 images of the topographical features of the region, the types and construction of structures impacted or endangered by the fires, and defensive actions taken. They also developed a timeline of the fires’ movement and spread, Alex Maranghides, NIST’s Amarillo study team leader, said in a statement.

“This will allow us to understand why some structures burned to the ground while others close by did not,” Maranghides said. “That knowledge could help us build more fire-resilient buildings in the future.”

WUI evidence-gathering protocols consisted of a two-tiered approach. For this particular fire, the first tier was to record broad observations of damage across the entire fire perimeter while the second was to use computer modeling to study the fires’ behaviors in depth and assess factors that determine the response of different structures to a WUI fire.

“The level of detail that can be obtained with our system is a vast improvement over traditional data-collection procedures that focus simply on the number of structures damaged or destroyed, without taking into account the underlying factors that actually cause the destruction,” Maranghides said.

The Amarillo study is part of a broader NIST program to study WUI fires to gain a better understanding of their behavior, develop standardize data collection and computer modeling tools, and facilitate the creation, testing and implementation of innovative fire protection and prevention methods, according to NIST.