Cutting Edge Research on Decision Support Systems for Wildland Fire

Highlights from the latest special issue in journal Forests

Fort Collins, Colo., Oct. 20, 2021— After several years of intense fires across the west, scientists have been working to develop new methods to support decision making. USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station research foresters Dave Calkin, PhD and Matt Thompson, PhD assembled and authored cutting edge research as invited editors in a new special issue of the journal Forests. “Decision Support System Development of Wildland Fire” compiles the latest science behind emerging decision support systems that help managers deal with the uncertainty of wildfire throughout the management cycle of planning, deciding, executing, monitoring, and learning.  

Calkin specializes in wildland fire risk assessment, economic analyses, and decision support system development. “The last decade of fire activity has highlighted that we are in a ‘new normal’ with devastating consequences to the natural environment, communities around the globe, and fire management personnel,” said Dr. Calkin. “Addressing this crisis will require the development of actionable science that takes advantage of emerging research and technology while benefitting from the hard gained knowledge of practitioners. This issue highlights several innovative decision support tools with many having benefited from the partnership of research and fire management.”

Managing wildland fire is inherently complex. Successful strategies require innovative partnerships between the research and management communities to create models that inform real-time decisions. Researchers from the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station contributed a publication to this special issue, “Hazards of Risk: Identifying Plausible Community Wildfire Disasters in Low-Frequency Fire Regimes.” The authors will host a webinar about the findings of this research on October 27, 2021.

Calkin, Thompson, and colleagues authored the included papers, “Is This Flight Necessary? The Aviation Use Summary (AUS): A Framework for Strategic, Risk-Informed Aviation Decision Support” and “Strategic Wildfire Response Decision Support and the Risk Management Assistance Program.” Risk Management Assistance incorporates the use of the best available science and emerging research tools in order to rapidly analyze tradeoffs when making decisions about managing fires. Research publications in this special issue highlight the Risk Management Assistance Program’s role in improving the quality of strategic decision making within the Forest Service and beyond.