The IAP is where management lays out their plan of action for an incident, along with the data and analyses which support their decisions. This document provides fire analysts with the basic framework for documenting expected fire behavior while on assignment. The fire analyst's most important contribution to the IAP is their written fire behavior forecast.

The fire behavior forecast itself is often only one page in length, plus any additional pages constituted by the weather forecast from the Incident Meteorologist (IMET) or local NWS (National Weather Service) office. Nonetheless, behind this forecast and supporting its validity lies an entire constellation of documentation maintained by the fire analyst. This includes, among other things, core data, model run inputs and outputs, descriptions of how conflicting data were reconciled, and explanations of the fire analyst's rationales for interpreting data the way he or she did.

On the next few screens, we will examine some specific elements of this documentation.