Donna Scholz joined the FPA Team as the Executive Project Manager on October 16, 2006. Donna brings her management experience from USGS. She has a background in IT project management and the implementation of remote sensing and GIS in several areas of natural resource management. She formerly was the Deputy Project Manager for Geospatial One-Stop, one of the 24 eGov initiatives in the President's Management Agenda.

For more information visit http://fpa.nifc.gov or call Venetia Gempler 208-947-3786



Current Topics:

Under the Microscope

Meeting with WFLC

Option Development

Fire Program Analysis (FPA)

is a common system designed to help wildland fire managers plan and budget using a common interagency fire management program across agency boundaries. FPA will display how different fire management budgets effectively support land management goals and objectives.

The Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC)
The purpose of the council is to support the implementation and coordination of the National Fire Plan and the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy.

The Council is a cooperative interagency organization dedicated to achieving consistent implementation of the goals, actions, and policies in the National Fire Plan and the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. The Council provides leadership and oversight to ensure policy coordination, accountability, and effective implementation of the National Fire Plan and the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy.




November 2006

Under the Microscope: The FPA Interagency Science Team Considerable effort has gone into assembling a group of respected scientists that represent broad experience, diverse disciplines, and technical skills. Their input ensures the project's design is based on peer reviewed science.

Members Expertise Agency/Affiliation
Danny Lee
Co-lead		 Risk Modeling USDA Forest Service
Miles Hemstrom Ecology USDA Forest Service
Keith Reynolds Decision Science USDA Forest Service
Jeremy Fried Econ., fire preparedness, forest inventory USDA Forest Service
Mark Finney Fire Behavior USDA Forest Service
Mike Bevers Operations research USDA Forest Service
Jack Waide
Co-lead 		Ecology DOI - USGS
James E. Vogelmann Land cover characterization, monitoring (LANDFIRE) DOI - USGS
Bill Labiosa Decision Science DOI - USGS
Anne M. Wein Operations Research Analyst DOI - USGS
Doug Rideout Forest Economist Colorado State University
John Sessions Quantitative Modeling Oregon State University

Meeting with the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC)
October 11, 2006 - The Fire Program Analysis (FPA) Interagency Science Team (IST) met with the Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) and presented a conceptual architecture to guide the next Fire Program Analysis development phase.

The recommended architecture is responsive to the FPA vision, namely that FPA should represent “a common interagency planning and budget information system, with a cost-effective trade-off analysis incorporating land and resource management objectives”.

Once fully developed and implemented, the FPA system will provide planning and budget support by displaying key efficiency, effectiveness, and performance measures for various budget scenarios and constraints, and by estimating costs for fire program components for each agency by Fire Planning Unit.

The architecture for the FPA decision support system addresses three broad components:

•  the FPA system should inform decisions by national budget leads and fire planners in formulating annual budget proposals and planning for budget allocations among fire program components by agency and Fire Planning Unit (FPU);

•  the FPA system should also enable FPU-level analyses that inform decisions made by local agency fire program and resource managers regarding alternative allocations of fire program resources within the geographic area covered by the FPU; and

•  the results or outcomes of these decisions at each level should be evaluated against five broad management concerns, formulated as a series of effectiveness, efficiency and performance measures, defined in an operationally appropriate manner at national and FPU levels.

The effectiveness, efficiency and perfomance measures focus on:
•  growing annual suppression costs for large fires,
•  fires that occur and cause significant damage within the wildland
   urban interface (WUI),
•  fires that cause severe impacts to highly valued resources,
•  prevention and suppression of unwanted and unplanned fires,
•  meeting fire and fuels management objectives on federal lands.

The WFLC requested a range of options be developed which provides more details regarding program benefits, tradeoffs between program components, and the proposed workload to field units, and operations and maintenance costs.

Option Development
 November 1, 2006 - The IST and the FPA team met to review the progress of the conceptual architecture report and discuss development options. Five options have been jointly developed that address the range of alternatives requested by the WFLC.

These options will be shared with the federal fire directors and their acting representatives. Their recommendations are being included in the materials being prepared for the next interagency Executive Oversight Group and the WFLC briefings.