Strategic Wildfire Response Decision Support and the Risk Management Assistance Program

Abstract

In 2016, the USDA Forest Service, the largest wildfire management organization in the world, initiated the risk management assistance (RMA) program to improve the quality of strategic decision-making on its largest and most complex wildfire events. RMA was designed to facilitate a more formal risk management process, including the use of the best available science and emerging research tools, evaluation of alternative strategies, consideration of the likelihood of achieving objectives, and analysis of tradeoffs across a diverse range of incident objectives. RMA engaged personnel from a range of disciplines within the wildfire management system to co-produce actionable science that met the needs of the highly complex incident decision-making environment while aiming to align with best practices in risk assessment, structured decision-making, and technology transfer. Over the four years that RMA has been in practice, the content, structure, and method of information delivery have evolved. Furthermore, the RMA program’s application domain has expanded from merely large incident support to incorporate pre-event assessment and training, post-fire review, organizational change, and system improvement. In this article, we describe the history of the RMA program to date, provide some details and references to the tools delivered, and provide several illustrative examples of RMA in action. We conclude with a discussion of past and ongoing program adaptations and of how this can inform ongoing change efforts and offer thoughts on future directions.

Assessing Potential Safety Zone Suitability Using a New Online Mapping Tool

“…Beyond SZs and escape routes, there is an emergence of other geospatially driven approaches for fire management that have implications for firefighter safety, such as the mapping of snag hazards [52], the spatially explicit estimation of suppression difficulty [2,53], the prediction of potential control locations [3,54], and the mapping of potential wildland fire operational delineations [55,56]. These tools are now commonly used in the US to enhance situational awareness and improve the quality of strategic decision-making on large and complex wildfire incidents [57]. Taken together, these tools stand to greatly improve the efficiency and safety with which wildland firefighters can engage in their life-saving work.…”

Potential operational delineations: new horizons for proactive, risk-informed strategic land and fire management

“…Examining the tradeoffs associated with these resource assignments is critically important. In recent years, the use of PODs and Risk Management Assistance has increased, as have pilot efforts supporting situational awareness and prioritization at Multi-Agency Coordinating Centers, suggesting promise for improved system efficiency (Belval et al 2022;Calkin et al 2021).…”

“…On the upper left -the primary focus of this paper -are assessment and planning tools that support identification of PODs and corresponding risk-informed strategic response categories. On the upper right are incident response tools, including the existing Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS; Noonan-Wright et al 2011;Calkin et al 2011) as well as emerging tools like the POD Atlas, a map-based product which summarizes a host of relevant information for each POD ) and the Risk Management Assistance program, a multi-year effort to improve the quality of risk analysis and decision making on many of the most complex, challenging, and high visibility fire events (Calkin et al 2021). On the lower right are fuels management tools, including the existing Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS; Drury et al 2016), as well as emerging tools that generate accurate spatial information quantifying delivered costs associated with treatment prescriptions (Hogland et al 2018) and leverage the PODs framework to assign prescriptions and spatially prioritize treatment locations (Hogland et al 2021).…”

“…The pre-positioned, mapped information can assist with information sharing, developing a common operating picture, and communicating fire management strategy internally and during public engagement before, during, and after a fire. The framework is rooted in risk management principles (e.g., addressing uncertainty, being proactive, and seeking out the best available information), blends advanced spatial fire modeling analytics with local expertise, emphasizes place-based engagement with local managers and stakeholders, co-produces actionable science-informed knowledge, and facilitates communication, coordination, and decision making across wildland fire Thompson et al (2016cThompson et al ( , 2018b Optimization and prioritization Values and objectives; forest and rangeland restoration; fuel treatment strategy; incident response strategy Hogland et al (2021), Metlen et al (2021), Thompson et al (2017), Wei et al (2018Wei et al ( , 2019Wei et al ( , 2021, Wollstein et al (2022) Iterative improvement from user feedback Practitioner feedback; incident summaries; informational documents and overviews; third-party assessment Caggiano et al (2019Caggiano et al ( , 2020Caggiano et al ( , 2021, Calkin et al (2021), Greiner et al (2020), O'Connor and Calkin (2019), Schultz et al (2021) and land management jurisdictions. Furthermore, PODs have emerged as useful boundary spanning objects and concepts (i.e., concrete objects such as maps that allow shared meaning and flexible interpretation, and notions that facilitate communication using a common vocabulary and shared meaning) that help bring more stakeholder voices to the table and more readily bridge ownership and disciplinary boundaries (Wyborn 2015;Davis et al 2021).…”

A Historical Perspective to Inform Strategic Planning for 2020 End-of-Year Wildland Fire Response Efforts

“…The Risk Management Assistance program has been working to bridge this divide in recent years and has made substantial progress [13], but information gaps remain, particularly surrounding resource availability. Such challenges result in a limited ability to use such data in decision support systems in time to inform critical decisions [14,15].…”