User feedback on the Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS)

Land and fire managers must tackle increasingly complex challenges across the landscapes where they work. Growing fuel loads, shifting climate patterns, and cross-boundary responsibilities demand smarter, more coordinated planning. To meet these challenges, managers use fuel treatment strategies that integrate science, data, and collaboration across agencies. Decision support systems have become essential in this work, helping managers prioritize, design, and implement treatments such as prescribed burns more effectively. The Interagency Fuel Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) emerged from this need as a unified framework that streamlines tools and data into a single, accessible platform.

The development of IFTDSS is ongoing. Future improvements to the system are informed by the needs of the fuels and wildfire management community, so user feedback is key. In 2023, a formal survey was commissioned through University of Idaho partners who conducted interviews with 47 system users from a variety of agencies and backgrounds. The goal was to gain a better understanding of how users use the system, what they like, and what they’d like to change. That information provides an overall snapshot of how the fuels management community learns and uses the system and how well it supports the needs of the users in the field.

The survey revealed that IFTDSS is primarily used for prescribed fire planning, treatment planning, NEPA processes, and risk assessment, with additional uses ranging from community wildfire protection plans to grant applications. Participants consistently valued the system’s ease of use, efficiency, and strong support for communication and collaboration. Its intuitive workflow, integrated datasets, and ability to produce visual outputs help managers streamline planning and convey information to colleagues, partners, and the public. These strengths make the system particularly valuable in an environment where coordinated, science-informed planning is essential.

Despite its benefits, users recommended several improvements to enhance IFTDSS’s capabilities. Suggestions included more robust weather and contingency planning features, expanded landscape editing tools, and enhanced data sharing functionality to better support collaborative work. Interviewees also emphasized the importance of diverse training resources – videos, tutorials, workshops, and hands-on learning – which they rely on to effectively adopt the system. Overall, the findings highlight a tool that is highly useful yet still evolving, with continued user feedback critical to ensuring it meets the changing needs of the fuels management community.

Read more about IFTDSS and the survey findings in the full article on Wildfire Today.

Photo Credit

Figure 2 from Hyde et al. in Wildfire Magazine, Issue 4 2025.

Common parts of the IFTDSS interface, including a treatment polygon in Map Studio, fire behavior summary report indicating flame lengths, and user interface for comparing fire behavior outputs under various weather conditions.