Description

Following the 1994 fire season in the United States of America the five federal wildland fire agencies and bureaus within the Departments of Agriculture and Interior along with the State Foresters conducted a review of the Federal Fire Policy. Lack of a common, interagency fire planning and budgeting system was identified as a weakness amongst the federal agencies. The implementation plan identified one of its action items as the development and implementation of a common, interagency fire planning and budgeting system. The Fire Program Analysis System - Preparedness Module (FPA-PM) incorporates the use of the National Fire Danger Rating System, Energy Release Component for developing probability distributions of fuel moistures with associated probability distributions of wind speed to be used for fire behavior calculations. Weather observation data required for the distribution of wind speeds and fuel moistures is often problematic or missing, FPA-PM utilizes a GRID weather database to fulfill weather observation data when local data is unavailable. Employing an optimization model for developing a cost effective frontier for fire planning is a key component to FPA-PM and is a new process for the five federal wildland fire agencies. The model is dependent upon land management objectives coupled with fire management strategies, reflected in weights assigned to each Fire Management Unit. Weights reflect the priority or relative importance for initial attack and wildland fire use for resource benefit one Fire Management Unit to another.