In 2005, Dr. Marty Alexander compiled a comprehensive list of published and unpublished literature relating to wildfire behaviour. Since then, the organizers of the Fire Behaviour Specialist Course have been adding new-found literature to this list. The list is a Word document and contains hyperlinks to many of the articles and reports, which are stored digitally in a separate folder. This folder now contains 2GB of data.

This list of published and unpublished literature on wildfire behaviour, and the folder containing the digital copies, is a treasure trove for anyone looking for wildfire behaviour information. But in its current form, the information is inaccessible to most. The few that do have access find that searching and updating the list cumbersome and time-consuming. The list and the document copies cannot be sorted, filtered, or easily shared.

We developed a database that will provide access and search functionality to this compendium of published and unpublished fire behaviour literature. The database was completed in December 2013 and the next step is for Dave Finn (ESRD) to find someone to enter all the information. Because copyright issues would likely prohibit a web-based interface, researchers will create DVDs that can be distributed to users. The plan is to have these DVDs available for the Fire Behaviour Specialist course in 2015.