Engaging the Fire Before it Starts: Proactive Risk Management

The Wildfire Risk Management Science Team produced a series of three illustrated videos to help users understand their work. These videos describe new research related to the complexity of fire risk management and features tools developed by the team for use in proactive wildfire planning: quantitative wildfire risk assessments, suppression difficulty index, and potential control locations that help form potential wildfire operational delineations (aka PODs). The Team deploys these tools in planning applications on National Forest System lands across the western U.S. Incident management teams use these tools for real-time decision support to prioritize responder safety and assess suppression opportunities in fire operations. Forest managers and their neighbors use these tools to promote shared stewardship and to integrate fire into landscape planning, prioritize fuel treatments, and create or improve control opportunities to reduce risk to things they value.