The Fire Economics Evaluation System (FEES) - a simulation model - is being designed for long-term planning application by all public agencies with wildland fire management responsibilities. A fully operational version of FEES will be capable of estimating the economic efficiency, fire-induced changes in resource outputs, and risk characteristics of a range of fire management program options. Risk is described by the probability distributions of economic efficiency and resource output changes that result from annual variation in factors such as fire occurrences and fire weather. Particular attention is given to the fuel treatments, initial attack, and large fire suppression portions of the fire management program. FEES evaluates the performance of fire management program options as they are applied to particular fire management 'situations,' described by parameters which influence program performance, such as vegetation, topography, resource management objective, and fire occurrence levels. Location is addressed only through the regional fire climate zone. The situation-specific design, as opposed to location- or site-specific design, was chosen to avoid duplication of data collection and analysis costs. Duplication costs occur when site-specific planning models are applied independently to planning areas even though the characteristics of the area which influence fire program performance are essentially the same.