Every part of RidgeOps, and what it is for.
This is the manual. Each section covers what a feature does, why it matters on an incident, and how to work it. Anything marked Pro needs a subscription; everything else comes with a free account.
Getting started
RidgeOps runs on iOS, Android, tablet and browser from one account. Sign in anywhere and you get the same map, the same org and the same data.
- Create a free account at ridgeops.ai/register, or in the app.
- Open the map. Public sensors and every overlay are live immediately — you do not need hardware to get value on day one.
- Log a field reading to put your own observation on the map.
- When you are ready, pair an ANEMOS station or upgrade to Pro for command tools and org sharing.
An account is required — there is no anonymous view — but the free tier is not a teaser. The public sensor network, all eight overlays and your own field readings are permanently free.
The map
One map carries everything: your stations, the public network, public fire and weather feeds, your hand-logged observations, and anything your org has drawn.
Sensor glyphs
Each station renders as a single glyph rather than a stack of numbers — wind vector, temperature, humidity and air quality read at a glance. Zoomed out, nearby stations cluster; zoom in and they resolve to exact positions.
Layer controls
Every overlay toggles independently, so you can build the picture the incident needs instead of fighting a fixed template. Layer state persists between sessions.
OverlaysFree
Eight public feeds, layered under your own data instead of living in eight other tabs. All of them are free-tier.
| Overlay | Source | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| FIRMS hotspots | NASA MODIS + VIIRS | Satellite thermal detections — where something is burning now. |
| WFIGS perimeters | NIFC | Official incident boundaries for active fires. |
| Red Flag warnings | NWS | Issued red-flag polygons over your ground. |
| Rain radar | RainViewer | Precipitation and storm cells, animated. |
| Lightning | Strike feed | Strike warnings near the area you are working. |
| Regional wind | NOAA HRRR | Modelled wind field, with a scrubbable timeline. |
| Temperature | NOAA HRRR | Gridded surface temperature. |
| Forecast bar | NWS | Six-period outlook across the top of the map. |
A gridded forecast is the right starting point, and RidgeOps layers it in. But model winds are averaged over kilometres and terrain changes them every hundred metres — which is what sections 04 and 05 are for.
ANEMOS sensorsPro
ANEMOS is a self-contained wind, temperature, humidity and air-quality station built by Bonny Doon Labs. It streams to the device in your hand over Bluetooth, and to the cloud over Wi-Fi when you provision it.
| Spec | Value |
|---|---|
| Anemometer | Ultrasonic, no moving parts |
| Wind range | 0–60 m/s |
| Sensors | Temperature −40–120°C, relative humidity, PM2.5 / PM10 |
| Sampling | 10 s |
| Battery | 24 h in the field |
| Mounting | Tripod, vehicle or fixed |
Pairing a station
- Power the station and put the app on the Home tab.
- Tap Connect and pick your station from the scan list. Saved stations show the label you gave them rather than a raw MAC address.
- Readings begin streaming over Bluetooth — typically on screen inside a minute.
- Optionally run Wi-Fi provisioning so the station also pushes to the cloud 24/7 with no gateway or base station.
This is the ground truth nobody else has. A station on the ridge you care about reports what that ridge is doing, at a resolution no regional model resolves.
Manual field readingsFree
No station on that slope? Log the observation by hand. Manual readings land on the same map, in the same record, as anything a sensor produced.
| Instrument | Captures |
|---|---|
| Fuel stick | Fine dead fuel moisture, % |
| Psychrometer | Wet/dry bulb → relative humidity |
| Ambient | Air temperature and humidity |
| Wind | Speed and direction |
| Burning Index | Computed — see section 06 |
| Visual | Free-form observation |
| Lightning | Observed strike |
| Other | Anything the list does not cover |
Logging one
- Open Readings on the map and drop a pin at your position.
- Pick the instrument and enter what you measured.
- Save. If you have no signal it queues locally and uploads the moment you get bars.
On a free account you see your own manual readings. Pro adds everyone else's in your organization on the same map.
Fire-weather indices — PIG, FDFM and BIFree
RidgeOps computes the fire-danger numbers you would otherwise work out by hand or wait on: Probability of Ignition, Fine Dead Fuel Moisture and the Burning Index. From your readings where you have them, from public data where you do not.
Measured and estimated never blur. An index computed from instruments you actually read is labelled and rendered differently from one estimated off public grids. You can always see which you are looking at, and what it was derived from.
PIG — Probability of Ignition
The chance that a firebrand landing in fine dead fuel starts a sustaining fire, expressed 0–100 and banded. It is the number that tells you how forgiving — or unforgiving — the next hour is.
Recipe: air temperature and relative humidity, refined by shading and, if you have it, a measured fine dead fuel moisture. Log a psychrometer or ambient reading and PIG resolves at that site; supply a fuel-stick value too and it sharpens.
FDFM — Fine Dead Fuel Moisture
The moisture content of the fine dead fuels that carry initial spread. Read it off a fuel stick and log it; it stands on its own as an index and feeds PIG and BI.
BI — Burning Index
How hard a fire would be to contain where you are standing. RidgeOps derives it the way BI is actually defined — through flame length:
- Rothermel head-fire outputs give reaction intensity, fuel SAV ratio and rate of spread.
- Byram's chain turns those into fireline intensity and predicted flame length.
- BI = 10 × flame length in feet.
Fuel model comes from LANDFIRE and slope/aspect from a digital elevation model, both cached per location. Weather comes from your station if you have one on site, or from the HRRR grid if you do not.
The estimated BI field
Turn the Burning Index overlay on and RidgeOps computes BI across a grid over your current view, so you can see where conditions worsen rather than reading a single point. It is deliberately coarse and local — every cell does a real fuel and terrain lookup, so the layer hides when you zoom out.
These are the calculations that drive go/no-go decisions, and gathering the inputs by hand is exactly the tedium the fire chiefs described. Doing the arithmetic on device — against real NFDRS-lineage models rather than a rule of thumb — puts the number in front of the person who needs it while it is still true.
The estimated PIG, FDFM and BI overlays are free-tier, and so are indices derived from your own manual field readings. Pro adds indices across every reading in your organization, live ANEMOS streaming as an input, and export.
These are decision-support estimates, not a substitute for your own qualified assessment. Accuracy depends on sensor placement, calibration and how well the mapped fuel model matches what is actually on the ground. Keep NOAA, NWS and your local fire authority in the loop.
Command toolsPro
Draw the incident on shared terrain so everyone is working the same picture instead of a screenshot in a group text.
- Pins — a point that matters: an anchor, a hazard, a water source.
- Lines — firelines, dozer guards, hose lays.
- Zones — polygons for safety zones, division boundaries, evacuation areas.
- Arrows — direction of spread, planned movement.
How sharing works
Objects sync across your organization in real time. Everyone signed into the same org sees the same drawing on the same terrain, on whatever device they are carrying.
Alerts & thresholdsPro
Set the conditions that matter and RidgeOps watches for them, with audio, at three severities: warning, critical and emergency.
| Trigger | Default behaviour |
|---|---|
| Wind speed increase | Sustained rise over a 10-minute average, gust spikes ignored. |
| Wind direction shift | A shift of 45° or more against a moving baseline. |
| Humidity drop | A fall of 10 points, or crossing an absolute floor of 20%. |
| Temperature rise | Sustained increase over the averaging window. |
Why it does not spam you
Every threshold has to hold for several consecutive readings before it fires, and each has a re-trigger margin — a condition must recover past that margin before it can alert again. A gusty ridge hovering on the line will not set your tablet off every minute.
Alert evaluation runs against the station paired to your device. Configure thresholds under Settings → Alerts & Thresholds.
OrganizationsPro
An organization is the shared workspace for a crew, a department, a district or a ranch — everyone's readings, drawings and stations in one picture.
- Roles and invitations — invite members, assign roles, manage who can change what.
- Device pools — stations belong to the org, not to one phone.
- Cross-org sharing — share data with a neighbouring district without merging accounts.
- Public visibility — opt an individual station into the public network, or keep it entirely private.
Every organization's data is isolated at the database level. You choose what is shared to the public network and what stays inside your org, per device.
Data & exportPro
Trend every channel over a shift, then take the record with you — including the ICS forms the after-action actually asks for.
| Format | Use |
|---|---|
| CSV | Spreadsheets and analysis. |
| JSON | Feeding your own tooling. |
| GeoJSON | GIS. |
| KMZ | Google Earth. |
| ICS-214 | Activity log. |
| ICS-213 | General message form. |
| ICS-209 weather | The weather block of the incident status summary. |
| Spot forecast | Spot-forecast request supporting data. |
| Exposure report | Air-quality exposure over a shift. |
The paperwork gets written either way. Producing ICS-214 and the ICS-209 weather block straight from the readings that were already logged removes a transcription step — and the transcription errors with it.
API accessPro
Pull your reading history and stream live data into your own systems.
- Open Settings → API keys and create a key.
- Call the REST endpoints for readings, devices, organizations, alert history and thresholds.
- Register a webhook if you want events pushed to you instead of polling.
Full endpoint reference: API documentation.
Working offline
The places that need awareness most are the places with one bar. RidgeOps is built for that rather than surprised by it.
- Bluetooth keeps working. Your station streams to your device with no network at all.
- Readings queue locally. Nothing is lost while you are out of coverage.
- Sync resumes automatically. The queue uploads the moment connectivity returns.
- Cached map tiles. Terrain you have already loaded stays available.
Cloud-only tools go dark exactly when it matters. The data you gather in a dead zone is still data — it just uploads later.