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Project ID: 08-1-4-01

Year: 2008

Date Started: 05/01/2008

Date Completed: 06/30/2011

Title: The Interplay of AMR, Suppresion Costs, Community Interaction, and Organizational Performace - A Multi-Disciplinary Approach

Project Proposal Abstract: Wildland fire management must balance the multiple objectives of protecting life, property and resources; reducing hazardous fuels; and restoring ecosystems. Increasingly, these policy imperatives must be met while achieving cost containment. One key to balancing these objectives is exercising management flexibility through the use of Appropriate Management Response (AMR). While AMR is a compelling vision, we lack specifics about the factors that influence strategic and tactical decision-making and the ecologic, economic, and social effects of management actions. Our proposed collaborative project fills this void by integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives through a mix of quantitative and qualitative methodologies to investigate 1) key relationships theorized to influence the practice of AMR, including how community interaction increases or decreases the opportunity to exercise AMR (Bullets 6, 7) and 2) how the practice of AMR in 2007 and 2008 may/may not contribute to cost containment (Bullets 2, 3,7, 8) and organizational performance (Bullets 1, 7). By using this approach, we will provide land managers with scientifically grounded information about the interplay of fire management strategies/tactics and wildland fire management costs (to federal, state and local governments), community interaction, and key fire policy objectives (safety, value protection, ecosystem restoration), as well as a protocol for tracking progress. We propose a three phase research design to understand the relationships among cost, community interaction, organizational performance and flexibility in fire management strategy and tactics in the FY 2007 and 2008 fire seasons. We will combine an in-depth focus on the Northern Rockies Geographic Area with a broad, national focus to address these issues. In Phase 1, we will develop a sampling frame by creating a typology of fire management strategies. This typology will be used in preliminary analysis of FY 2007 fires and provide a sampling framework from which to draw a sample of FY 2008 fires. In Phase 2, we will complete on-going investigations from FY2007 to begin to understand how each factor (cost, community interaction and organizational performance) influences and is influenced by flexibility. We will then integrate these results and refine our protocols for data collection on FY 2008 fires. In Phase 3, we will carry out research on the FY2008 fires using our common framework and approach, integrate these findings and disseminate our results. Research will be conducted in close communication with fire managers, producing multiple opportunities for exchange of ideas, sharing of preliminary results and interpretations, and opportunities to refine metric definitions and data collection protocols to best meet both management and research needs.Benefits derived from this research include: 1) clearer description for fire managers of the relationships among cost (to federal, state and local entities), community interaction, safety, ecology, organizational performance, and AMR to fire management strategies and tactics; 2) Draft performance evaluation and assessment protocols that allow the agencies to monitor organizational performance trends ? both process (agency administrators and incident management team relations) and outcome (the impact of a given fire on human safety, values at risk, community relations and ecosystems); and 3) minimize the burden on AA and IMTs during an incident by coordinating efforts, e.g., consolidating data collection protocols and field visits.

Principal Investigator: Anne E. Black

Agency/Organization: Forest Service

Branch or Dept: RMRS-Forestry Sciences Lab-Missoula

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Co-Principal Investigator	Krista M. Gebert	Forest Service	RMRS-Intermountain Fire Sciences Lab
Co-Principal Investigator	Sarah M. McCaffrey	Forest Service	NRS-Northern Research Station
Co-Principal Investigator	Toddi A. Steelman	North Carolina State University-Raleigh	Department of Forestry & Environmental Resources
Federal Cooperator	Anne E. Black	Forest Service	RMRS-Forestry Sciences Lab-Missoula

Project Locations

Consortium

Alaska

Appalachian

California

Great Basin

Great Plains

Lake States

Oak Woodlands

Northern Rockies

Northwest

Pacific

South

Southern Rockies

Southwest

Tallgrass

Level	State	Agency	Unit
NATIONAL		STATE
NATIONAL		FED

Project Deliverables

Final Report ("Results presented in JFSP Final Reports may not have been peer-reviewed and should be interpreted as tentative until published in a peer-reviewed source.")

	ID	Type	Title
	10174	Refereed Publication	Best Practices in Risk and Crises Communication: Implications for Natural Hazards Management
	8523	NonRefereed Publication	A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Fire Management Strategy, Suppression Costs, Community Interaction, and Organizational Performance
	8540	NonRefereed Publication	An Interim Report on the Interplay of Wildland Fire Suppression Costs and Decision-Making
	8522	NonRefereed Publication	The Key Decision Log: Facilitating High Reliability and Organizational Learning
	8206	Field Demonstration/Tour	Experimenting with Ways to Report and Improve Alignment of Incident Objectives with Incident Outcomes
	8205	Field Demonstration/Tour	Key Decision Log for the Backbone Fire
	8204	Progress Report	Project Update for the Northern Rockies Coordination Group fall meeting.

Supporting Documents

There are no supporting documents available for this project.

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