Improving Identification of Values at Risk
1) Wildland Fire Decision Support Systems (WFDSS)
The WFDSS project focuses on developing decision support tools that
aid land managers in making well informed strategic plans regarding
wildland fire. The increasing complexity of fire management requires
improved decision support tools beyond what the current Wildland
Fire Situation Analysis (WFSA) provides. Advances in fire behavior
modeling, geospatial analysis and data, fire behavior modeling and
other tools provides opportunities to advance decision support tools
that can improve strategic fire management decision making. This
project will develop economic models to evaluate the resource values
threatened by wildland fire using a spatial framework that integrates
improved fire behavior models. Additionally, cost models will be
developed that could improve estimation of expected fire suppression
costs.
Principal Investigators:
David Calkin (RMRS-4802)
Mark Finney (RMRS-4401)
Krista Gebert (RMRS-4802)
Jingjing Liang (University of Montana)
2) Burned Area Emergency Response
The increased scrutiny of all wildfire related expenditures requires
improvements in cost-benefit accounting systems including methods
to assess values-at-risk. Working under very tight timelines, Burned
Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams are required to demonstrate
that the value of resources to be protected by emergency response
treatments exceeds the costs of the treatments to be applied. Several
limitations compromise effective calculation of values-at-risk:
current valuation guidelines are insufficient, data to support direct
valuation of specific resource items are often difficult to obtain,
scientific knowledge and data to support calculation of the commodity
values are not sufficiently organized to be efficiently and effectively
used, and means to account for non-commodity resources are poorly
defined.
This project reviews current BAER valuation procedures to determine
the feasibility of developing standard procedures and decision support
tools to guide calculation of values-at-risk and improve pre-incident
planning to facilitate rapid, well-organized, response. The objectives
of this project are being met through literature review, direct
observation and interview of BAER personnel, and on-line research
with follow-up interviews to discover and evaluate potentially useful
databases.
Principal Investigators:
David Calkin (RMRS-4802)
Kevin Hyde (METI)
Greg Jones (RMRS-4802)
Pete Robichaud (RMRS-4702)
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