Tips & Tricks Guide Available on the Web!   The new FPA "Tips & Tricks" guide is now on the FPA web site.   This first release (20 tips) is posted as a searchable PDF document. As the guide content grows, it will be updated as necessary. Some of the topics in this first version include:  Updating Your Fire Resources, "Shoulder Season" Resources, Using "Damaging FIL", and Discovery Size Selection.   You can find this new guide at: http://www.fpa.nifc.gov/FAQ/Tips%20and%20Tricks%20for%20Web.pdf .
If you have any topics or tips you'd like to see added to this guide, please send them in to fa_fpa@nifc.blm.gov with the subject line ("Tips & Tricks" Suggestions).

Performance Measures Reworked:  The Executive Oversight Group (EOG) approves Performance Measures. 

For planning year FY2011, FPA calculated five performance measures as a means for FPUs to assess the effectiveness of their investment strategies. Four of the measures were straightforward. Performance measure #3 was a more complex 3-part measure.

For planning year FY2012, the FPA EOG has approved "unbundling" performance measure #3 into the three component parts. These more straightforward measures will make it easier for the Washington Office and Interagency Science Team (IST) to interpret. Measures 1, 2, 4, and 5 will remain the same as last year.  The new measures are:
#3 - Number of acres treated for hazardous fuels,
#6 - Number of acres burning above the damaging threshold, and
#7 - Number of acres burning at or below the damaging threshold.

Refer to Understanding FPA and the Performance Measures Used in
Analyzing Investment Alternatives for further information.

Version 2.22 New Release Features are now available.   The enhancements released on October 1st as Version 2.22 are:

• FWA Fire Dispatch Levels can be specified by Flame Length (FL), Rate of Spread (ROS), or Fire Intensity Level (FIL).  Prior to this enhancement, Burning Index (BI) was the only indices available.
•  Aviation resources can now be sent at "night" during extended daylight hours in places such as Alaska.
• Messages will be available on the login screen so users can easily be alerted about planned system maintenance times.
• Fixed non-critical system defects.
• The full suite of seven performance measures discussed earlier in this newsletter.

Budget Figures Update:

When building budget options, one of the first steps is to enter Total Partner Budget for preparedness and fuels.  This represents the total budget of all partners from which you can fund your .current options in preparedness and fuels. 

The baseline budget numbers for the various partners are provided by the corresponding agency’s national fire budget lead.  The Department of Interior (DOI) agencies have compiled and forwarded their figures on to the respective Geographic Area (GA) Leads who will distribute this data.  The Forest Service will have their figures for distribution to the GA Leads by the end of October.

For questions regarding your budget numbers, call your respective agency national budget lead: Denise Schmitz, BLM; Maggie Moran, BIA; Kathy Perez, FWS; Jeff Manley, NPS; or Gary Biehl, USFS.

Recent Discussions with Some of Our Customers highlighted the need for a simple explanation on how the Large Fire Module (LFM) works. The Large Fire Module for FPA is split into two stages. 

• Stage 1 involves collecting LANDFIRE, weather, fire history, and fuels prescription data from each FPU.   This data is then used to grow fires across each FPU in an effort to better understand the effect of weather, fuels, and topography on large fire growth in the FPU.  The resulting information is used to train the statistical models used in Stage 2.

• Stage 2 receives the ESL and WFU fires for each FPU directly from the Initial Response Simulator, and the fuels treatment information comes from the fuels options created by the FPU.  Stage 2 is strictly a statistical model and doesn't actually grow any fires.  Instead, it uses the information gleaned from Stage 1 and the above inputs to predict what will happen to a given ESL or WFU fire that occurs in a particular FWA.  This statistical simulation of large fires is then used to calculate the performance metrics for each FPU.

Test your Large Fire Module knowledge with this month’s Word Search Puzzle.  Click HERE to give it a try.

For Answers to last month’s FPA Crossword Puzzle, click HERE.