Fire tower is a multi-step process. In step one, users specify which land cover types are flammable and which ones are not. In step two, users set one or more fires of any size or shape anywhere in the landscape. In step three, users specify the rate of growth of the fire or they can set Fire Tower so that fires burn instantly to their limit. Step four, entails running the simulation and saving the resulting images and acreage reports. Fire Tower lets users update or change which land cover types are burnable while a fire is burning. For example, if a fire that starts in grasslands jumps to coniferous forest, Fire Tower allows making that shift in run time. Fire Tower also lets you add new fires at anytime during a given fire.

Fire Tower is especially useful for training land managers and foresters in fire response because, invariably, the resources necessary to fight wild fires are limited. Fire Tower gives land managers a tool for planning how best to deploy limited fire-fighting resources. For example, in a case where there are multiple fires but where there are only resources available to fight a few of them, Fire Tower lets these multiple fires run their course, thereby helping managers to decide which ones to actually fight. Fire Tower also allows users to visualize the impact of natural and artificial fire breaks, control burns and back-burning and other prescribed measures to control wild fires.

As a research tool, Fire Tower lets landscape ecologists address important questions such as; the impact of size and shape of an initial fire, the difference between single fires and multiple fires, and the significance of the location of an initial fire in a given landscape unit. For example, if a fire has the potential to burn a 5,000 acre land unit, Fire Tower shows that the location of the initial fire is very significant in terms of how fast the fire will spread across the entire unit and how and where it needs to be fought both safely and effectively.

Fire Tower allows users to control the following variables:

Specify which land cover types are flammable.
Dynamically update the flammability of land covers while a fire is being simulated thereby allowing fires to "jump" to new vegetation types.
Set one or multiple fires of any size or shape anywhere in the image.
Allow fires to burn to their limit or set the speed and direction that fires move.
Change the speed and direction that a fire is moving during a fire simulation.
Add new fires or extinguish fires dynamically, any time duing a fire simulation.
Extinguish fires during a simulation to see the effect on the spread of an active fire