LCES v0.2
The wildland fire IRPG one tap away, and Lessons Learned Center incidents on the map where they happened.
01 What it does
Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, Safety Zones: the wildland fire Incident Response Pocket Guide one tap away in ATAK, and the lessons other crews learned the hard way, on the map where they happened.
Technical details features in full, requirements, network
Features in full
The IRPG
- The whole NWCG Incident Response Pocket Guide (PMS 461, January 2025) in the pane, every page, with its tables and diagrams, in the book's own section colors.
- Tiles for the pages read every shift: the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders and 18 Watch Out Situations, LCES, the Briefing Checklist, the Common Denominators of Fire Behavior on Tragedy Fires, and the book's contents.
- One search box for the whole book and the lessons below; a search opens the page with the words marked.
- Larger text for reading in a moving vehicle.
Lessons Learned
- Burnovers, entrapments, fatalities, near misses and injuries from the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center's incident database, more than 2,300 of them, as a layer on the ATAK map. Tap one for what happened, a quote from the report, the fire behavior, and a link to the full report.
- A list under the tiles of the incidents nearest you, nearest first.
- Filters by distance, type and category (aviation, chainsaw, medical and others), with counts, and a zoom setting so a zoomed-out map stays readable. The list and the map always show the same incidents.
- Works with no signal. The plugin carries the whole list; with a network it checks once a day for a newer one.
Nothing is sent from the device. The plugin creates no CoT and talks to no TAK server.
Equipment required
Android device supported by ATAK-CIV 5.6, 5.7 or 5.8.
Works with
Any Android device supported by ATAK. No additional or external hardware, no sensors, no peripherals.
Network and security
(This is important for ATO, networking, and other security concerns)
Outbound TCP 443 (HTTPS) only.
Once a day, when the device has a network, the plugin reads a small JSON manifest from mapdepot.takwerx.org and, only if it lists a newer lessons catalog, downloads it (about 640 KB). The server's copy is rebuilt from the Lessons Learned Center's public service nightly and replaced only when the incidents changed. The download is checked against the SHA-256 digest in the manifest and against the catalog it replaces before it is used.
"Open the full report" on an incident hands an https link to the device's browser; the plugin itself does not fetch it.
No inbound ports. No listening sockets. No traffic to or from the TAK server, and no CoT is generated or consumed. With no network the plugin works in full from the copy it carries.
02 User manual
Download the PDF · The same manual ships inside the plugin, under ATAK’s Tool Preferences.