PWFDF Data Specification

This chapter provides the data specification (data spec) for the U.S. Geological Survey’s Post-Wildfire Debris-Flow (PWFDF) Collection. The PWFDF Collection archives official postfire debris-flow hazard assessments produced by the USGS since 2025. The collection is hosted on the USGS’s ScienceBase data catalog, which enables both manual and programmatic interactions with assessment products.

The purpose of this data spec is to formalize the organization and contents of assessment products within the collection, in order to:

1. Document the collection’s contents for the user community, and

2. Facilitate programmatic interactions with the collection.

Although the data spec is designed to be forward-looking, we acknowledge that it is impossible to anticipate all future needs and use cases. As such, the data spec may be updated over time. To support such changes, while simultaneously preserving historical information, this chapter provides a permanent archive of all current and past data specs.