WWETAC Projects

Project Title: National environmental threat assessment maps

Status: Ongoing

Principal Investigator: Ken Brewer, USDA Forest Service, Remote Sensing Applications Center, Salt Lake City, UT

Collaborators: Terry Shaw, USDA Forest Service (USDA-FS), Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center, Prineville, OR; Bill Hargrove, USDA-FS, Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, Asheville, NC; Eric Smith, USDA-FS Forest Health Technology Enterprise Team, Fort Collins, CO; Ron Neilson, USDA-FS Pacific Northwest Research Station, Corvallis, OR

E-mail Contact: Ken Brewer, kbrewer[at]fs.fed.us

Summary In the past, it has been difficult to find geographically comprehensive and spatially explicit data (i.e., maps) to inform national, strategic-level decisionmaking. Today, a lack of data is usually not the problem, but rather decisionmakers are faced with the daunting task of analyzing and visualizing the many data themes in a rational manner.

This project is assembling several core data sets required to assess environmental threats on a national scale. In addition, the project is researching and will propose methods for jointly analyzing these data.
Multiple criteria analysis methods need to be flexible enough to analyze more than one objective or goal in a complex spatial problem; however they assume that the problem is sufficiently precise that the goals and objectives can be defined.

Project Goals and Objectives:

The goal of this project is to develop a multicriteria decision-support system (MCDSS) capable of generating a set of national environmental threat assessment maps. This MCDSS, including the map products and tabular data produced, is intended to inform and support national-level and regional-level natural resource decisionmaking.

Specific objectives designed to achieve this goal include:

  1. Identification and assembly of relevant nationally consistent and continuous data sets related to environmental threats.
  2. Explore and recommend methods for jointly analyzing these data within the MCDSS.
  3. Explore and recommend methods for integrating global climate change scenarios into the MCDSS.

General Description

In the past, the paper and mylar maps were the only "technologies" available for analyzing multiple geospatial criteria. In addition, paper and mylar were not effective at analyzing more than a few criteria simultaneously and did not allow for easily modified "what if" scenario exploration.

Geographic information systems (GIS), however, are capable of integrating mental models developed by decisionmakers with the geospatial input layers. When customized to address with these types of analyses, GISs are often called "spatial decision support systems" (SDSS) or "multicriteria decision-support systems" (MCDSS). These systems are designed to assist the users by providing a flexible problem-solving environment. An ancillary benefit is that they facilitate improved communication between analysts, resource specialists, and decisionmakers, helping decisionmakers to articulate their information needs in a language geospatial analysts can interpret and implement.

The class of decisions that are typically addressed have several common attributes. They have:

  • Multiple criteria as inputs to the decision information space.
  • A large number of decision alternatives.
  • The decision alternatives are spatially heterogeneous.
  • The decisions are often surrounded by uncertainty.

The academic literature on this class of problems has its roots in a seminal work by Simon (1960). Contributions on addressing these problems in a spatial context was moved forward by Densham and Goodchild (1989) and Sprague and Watson (1996). Sprague and Watson (1996) described DSS in terms of three sets of capabilities in the areas of dialog, data, and modeling.

Status:

  • Preliminary identification and assembly the consistent and continuous nationwide data sets available for environmental threat analyses.
  • Demonstrated application of a composite threats map using the national insect and disease risk map, fire regime condition class, and forest fragmentation as input criteria.
  • Participation in climate change, insects, and pathogens workshop in Portland, Oregon.
  • Presentation created and presented at the National Risk Mapping Status meeting, Washington, D.C.

Deliverables

A geospatial library of individual, national environmental threats

  • Suggested methods for jointly analyzing the threats
  • Sample analyses that conceptually demonstrate a joint threat analysis
  • Geospatial analytical support to the Western Wildlands Environmental Threat Assessment Center and the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center

Background Citations

Densham P.J.; Goodchild, M.F. 1989. Spatial decision support systems: a research agenda. In: Proceedings GIS/LIS'89. Orlando, FL: 707-716.

Simon H.A. 1960. The new science of management decision. New York: Harper and Row.

Sprague, R.H., Jr.; Watson, H.J. 1996. Decision support for management. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Project ID: FY08TS45