Exploring Adoption of the Wildland Fire Decision Support System: End User Perspectives

Wildland fire managers are increasingly embracing risk management principles by being more anticipatory, proactive, and “engaging the fire before it starts”. This entails investing in pre-season, cross-boundary, strategic fire response planning with partners and stakeholders to build a shared understanding of wildfire risks and management opportunities. A key innovation in planning is the development of potential operational delineations (PODs), i.e., spatial management units whose boundaries are relevant to fire containment operations (e.g., roads, ridgetops, and fuel transitions), and within which potential fire consequences, suppression opportunities/challenges, and strategic response objectives can be analyzed to inform fire management decision making. As of the summer of 2020, PODs have been developed on more than forty landscapes encompassing National Forest System lands across the western USA, providing utility for planning, communication, mitigation prioritization, and incident response strategy development. Here, we review development of a decision support tool—a POD Atlas—intended to facilitate cross-boundary, collaborative strategic wildfire planning and management by providing high-resolution information on landscape conditions, values at risk, and fire management resource needs for individual PODs. With the atlas, users can rapidly access and assimilate multiple forms of pre-loaded data and analytics in a customizable manner. We prototyped and operationalized this tool in concert with, and for use by, fire managers on several National Forests in the Southern Rocky Mountains of the USA. We present examples, discuss real-world use cases, and highlight opportunities for continued decision support improvement.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prototyping a Geospatial Atlas for Wildfire Planning and Management

Thompson

Gannon

Caggiano

et al. 2020

“…PODs use some of the same analytical tools as RMA. A recent exploration of the Wildland Fire Decision-Support System (WFDSS) reports that the utility of the System to support risk-informed decision-making could be improved by incorporating prefire planning tools such as PODs [23]. Other examples of Forest Service initiatives that are focused on improving decision-making and coordination include the Shared Stewardship Strategy [24], Scenario Investment Planning [25], the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy [26], and the Wildfire Risk to Communities mapping effort [20].…”

Section: Exceedance Probability Curvesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Qualitative Study on the US Forest Service’s Risk Management Assistance Efforts to Improve Wildfire Decision-Making

Schultz

Miller

Greiner

et al. 2021

To support improved wildfire incident decision-making, in 2017 the US Forest Service (Forest Service) implemented risk-informed tools and processes, together known as Risk Management Assistance (RMA). The Forest Service is developing tools such as RMA to improve wildfire decision-making and implements these tools in complex organizational environments. We assessed the perceived value of RMA and factors that affected its use to inform the literature on decision support for fire management. We sought to answer two questions: (1) What was the perceived value of RMA for line officers who received it?; and (2) What factors affected how RMA was received and used during wildland fire events? We conducted a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with decision-makers to understand the contextualized and interrelated factors that affect wildfire decision-making and the uptake of a decision-support intervention such as RMA. We used a thematic coding process to analyze our data according to our questions. RMA increased line officers’ ability to communicate the rationale underlying their decisions more clearly and transparently to their colleagues and partners. Our interviewees generally said that RMA data analytics were valuable but did not lead to changes in their decisions. Line officer personality, pre-season exposure to RMA, local political dynamics and conditions, and decision biases affected the use of RMA. Our findings reveal the complexities of embracing risk management, not only in the context of US federal fire management, but also in other similar emergency management contexts. Attention will need to be paid to existing decision biases, integration of risk management approaches in the interagency context, and the importance of knowledge brokers to connect across internal organizational groups. Our findings contribute to the literature on managing change in public organizations, specifically in emergency decision-making contexts such as fire management.

“…Noble's study analyzed the adoption of DSS in the US Forest Service. The results indicated that fire administrators appreciate many components of DSS but see them mainly as a means to document fire management decisions [33]. This is due to several problems that must be faced when a wildland fire breaks out, such as the following: (1) it is difficult to communicate with all the members of a work team exactly when required, and therefore, the DSS cannot be used with all the information that it provides; (2) depending on the threat level, decisions are made only through conversations and expert judgment, not using data from the DSS; and (3) the lack of qualified personnel to use the DSS correctly.…”

Section: Background 21 Decision Support Systems and Wildland Firesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Noble carried out a study on the adoption of DSS for wildland fire management in the USA [33]. Through interviews with the personnel who worked in different wildland fire roles, he found the following challenges that must be considered in the construction of DSS.…”

Section: Challenges For the Use Of Dss In Wildland Firesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decision Support System Development of Wildland Fire: A Systematic Mapping

Vásquez

Cravero

Castro

et al. 2021

Wildland fires have been a rising problem on the worldwide level, generating ecological and economic losses. Specifically, between wildland fire types, uncontrolled fires are critical due to the potential damage to the ecosystem and their effects on the soil, and, in the last decade, different technologies have been applied to fight them. Selecting a specific technology and Decision Support Systems (DSS) is fundamental, since the results and validity of this could drastically oscillate according to the different environmental and geographic factors of the terrain to be studied. Given the above, a systematic mapping was realized, with the purpose of recognizing the most-used DSS and context where they have been applied. One hundred and eighty-three studies were found that used different types of DSS to solve problems of detection, prediction, prevention, monitoring, simulation, administration, and access to routes. The concepts key to the type of solution are related to the use or development of systems or Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the computer science area. Although the use of BA and Big Data has increased in recent years, there are still many challenges to face, such as staff training, the friendly environment of DSS, and real-time decision-making.