May 2007

The Fire Program Analysis (FPA) Business Leads represent the business needs of the five wildland fire management bureaus: USDA Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In their role, the Business Leads will work with the Executive Project Manager to ensure that interagency field issues and business requirements are understood and met by the project. They will also work closely with the Management Advisory Team, soon to be announced. This team's role will be to review and advise the Business Leads on issues related to business processes, ensure two-way communication with the agencies' line officers and fire managers regarding FPA requirements, policy, plans and schedules.

The Business Leads serve as the primary FPA project spokesperson for the Department of Interior or Forest Service to Congress, the Office of Management and Budget, the Government Accounting Office and department leadership.

Bonnie Wood is the newly arrived Business Lead for the Forest Service and soon will be joined by a Business Lead for the Department of Interior.

Current Topics:

FPA Business Leads
Memorandums, 4/6/07
 Team Events
Prototype Evaluation
 What's in Your FPU?
What's Next?

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

The Wildland Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) 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.

Fire Program Analysis (FPA)

 Fire Program Analysis (FPA) system is a common interagency decision support tool for wildland fire planning and budgeting. This tool will enable wildland fire managers in the five federal land management agencies to plan jointly.


The FPA System:

- will be designed to encourage state, local, and tribal agency participation.

- incorporates geospatial data which provide the means to map levels of wildland fire risk on lands across the country.

- generates outcomes from the fire planning unit that inform the national budget planning process.

- will provide a way for land managers to compare trade-offs between wildland fire program components.

- is a tool to ensure wildland fire management actions help meet performance measures outlined in the 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy.

USDA Forest Service and the DOI Memorandums, April 6, 2007, are being distributed through official channels. The purpose of the memorandums is to officially update the field regarding FPA development and implementation. Click here for courtesy copies for USDA Forest Service and the Department of the Interior as well as a description of system alternatives, Synopsis of FPA System of Alternatives.

Team Events: The FPA and Interagency Science Teams met the week of April 16, 2007 to evaluate and review the progress of the proof of concept prototype development.

Meeting objectives included:

  1. Evaluation of the approaches being tested for Large Fire module prototyping. The combined team will decide on the Large Fire approach that meets the needs of the proof of concept prototype, as charged by WFLC for a June 30th delivery date.
  2. Review of the prototype status, processes and approaches.
  3. Finalize the decision network structure to integrate the IRS and large fire model results.

The results included a large fire modeling approach that has exciting potential to account for 90% of large fire variability, and confirmation that the full prototype objectives will be met on schedule.

Prototype Evaluation May 22 - 24, 2007. The next step in the prototype development process is to gather the participating Fire Planning Units together to evaluate the progress of the FPA prototype.

Most of the participating FPUs have active state partners including Northwest Montana, which along with Southern Sierra will be running the prototype end-to-end and generating results. It is the first opportunity for participants to share their testing experiences, provide feedback, and help with calibration.

The prototype's success will be based on the ability to quantify how well it can help the FPA Team:

  • Demonstrate the capability to calculate the modeled performance measures based on input information available from data and models.
  • Demonstrate that individual modules are consistent internally and compatible with other modules.
  • Meet subject matter experts' expectations in terms of model results.
  • Assess workload demands on the field and computational needs are reasonable.

What's in Your FPU? Soon, the FPA team will be sending out an information status request to the interagency Fire Planning Units. The purpose of the request is to identify the FPU workload associated with preparing to run the FPA model. The information call will focus on the availability and quality of existing FPU boundary layers.

What's Next?

  • Prototype Evaluation - May 22 - 24, 2007
  • June 2007 - Brief National Fire & Aviation Executive Board
  • June 30 - Proof of Concept Prototype Delivery to the WFLC