Kevin Hyde and Edward B. Butler, 2008 Recipients of USFS Chief’s Honor Award
12/9/08
The Chief of the US Forest Service honored Missoula-based developments teams for their roles in building and implementing new risk-based wildland fire decision support systems. The teams received the 2008 “Chief’s Honor Award for Excellence in Science and Technology.” Two individuals from CFC were among the research group.
Edward B. Butler (CFC MS ’05) is a research staff member of the Quantitative Services Group of CFC and functioned as a Senior Analyst in the Rapid Analysis of Values at Risk (RAVAR) project. Butler has been a Cooperator with the USFS, Rocky Mountain Research Station’s (RMRS) Human Dimensions Research Unit since 2003.
Kevin Hyde (current CFC PhD student) is the Lead RAVAR Technical Developer working under contract at the RMRS unit since 2004.
The RMRS teams partnered with the Wildland Fire Research Development and Application Program out of Boise, ID to develop and implement the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) of which RAVAR and Fire Spread Probability (FSPro) are key elements. FSPro is fire behavior modelling module developed by Mark Finney of the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab. RAVAR is a spatially-explicit economic impacts model co-developed by Dave Calkin, USFS Research Economist and Hyde. The modules combine in WFDSS to form a scaleable decision support tool that helps Federal agency administrators and wildland fire managers make informed, risk-based decisions for all wildland fires.
Management response to WFDSS has been very positive. Use of these tools contributed to significantly lower suppression expenditures in FY 2007, based on historical management and spending patterns. FSPro, a spatial model that calculates and maps the probability of fire spread in the absence of suppression, assists managers in prioritizing and matching appropriate strategies, tactics and firefighting resources based on probabilities of fire spread. RAVAR, a model that spatially displays the primary resource values to be protected. RAVAR, when integrated with FSPro assists managers in the prioritization of firefighting resources based on values to be protected by risk categories.
President’s Budget 2008 (pp 9.6)
Comments from fire management personnel regarding WFDSS and RAVAR have been published in Scientific American (“Predicting Wildfires”, August 2007) and Wildfire Magazine (“Calculated Risk”, March 2007). More information on RAVAR can be found at:
http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/wfdss_ravar/
Butler works with Assistant Professor of Forest Operations, Woodham Chung and Assistant Professor of Natural Resource Economics, Tyron Venn in cooperative research with the RMRS unit. His current focus involves fire behavior, ecosystem dynamics, risk management, operational efficiency in support of forest planning.
Hyde works with Professor Scott Woods, Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences, studying spatial patterns of fire impacts and their relationship to post-fire erosion and runoff. His work at the RMRS research unit includes developing methods to predict fire “severity” during active fire events, extending fire predictions to potential hydrologic and geomorphic responses, and adapting models to predict the fate of material eroded from burned areas on water resource values downstream. These enhancements to RAVAR are expected to benefit fire management teams and post-fire burned area response teams.