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Fire Program Analysis
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Frequently Asked QuestionsGeneral FAQs | Implementation FAQs | Data FAQs | Fuels FAQs Questions leading with "New" are the newest editions to the FAQ page General FAQs New - FPA and LANDFIRE Questions and Answers - Summer- 2008 (PDF | 154 kb) What federal agencies are involved? Who is the Executive Oversight Group and how were they selected? What is the role of the national fire budget leads? Why is there a Management Advisory Team and an Interagency Science Team, aren't they the same? What happened to the issues identified in the review of FPA I? What is the difference between the FPA version 1 and version 2? What are EEPs? Are they considered predictors or targets? How will states be able to use FPA in the future? How are nonfederal partner resources and costs accounted for in the FPA analysis? Implementation FAQs What does it mean, "Inform the budget?" How will planners in the field get training for the FPA system? When will training begin? Data FAQs Fuels FAQs What is the intent of the fuels option? What does the fuels option do? Will the FPA system capture low percentage changes in fuels? What can FPUs do to show results from minor fuels treatment projects? Is it better to use percent change or spatial data for fuels information when doing an analysis? What Fire Behavior Prediction System (FBPS) fuel model can I use with the FPA system? Will I be able to compare the effects of maintenance fuels treatments vs. no maintenance? How current does the landscape fuels information need to be?
What is the Fire Program Analysis (FPA) project? The FPA system is an application to support the development and implementation of the federal wildland fire management agencies' program budget. What is the main purpose of FPA? Is it for the allocation of additional dollars or reallocation of dollars to priority areas? Is it an allocation tool or only used to inform agency allocations? The purpose of FPA is for informing the development of the out-year budget as well as informing the allocation process. FPA results can help identify how different levels of investments in an FPU ma increase or decrease and how well the mix of resources is able to meet the FPA performance measures. What federal agencies are involved? The federal agencies are the USDA Forest Service, and the four Department of the Interior wildland fire management agencies: Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service. Who is the Executive Oversight Group and how were they selected? The EOG is an Executive Oversight Group. It is co-lead by the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service. The co-leads may request non-federal representation on the EOG, within Federal Advisory Committee Act requirements. The composition of the EOG includes interdisciplinary and interdepartmental executive personnel as established by the U.S. Forest Service, the Department of the Interior, and the States. The group has been hand picked by Kent Connaughton, Associate Deputy Chief, State & Private Forestry, USDA Forest Service and Nina Rose Hatfield, Deputy Assistant Secretary - Business Management and Wildland Fire for the Department of the Interior. They will provide executive level leadership for the Fire Program Analysis (FPA) project. Specifically, they will keep the Wildland Fire Leadership Council informed about the FPA project status and issues. They will be advocates for the FPA project and providing support and strategic business direction. As needed, they will resolve policy issues and make high-level decisions affecting the project. What is the role of the national fire budget leads? The national fire budget leads are the subject matter experts for the five federal wildland fire management agencies in budget related topics. They are instrumental in the design of the FPA system to ensure the analysis system meets their data and analysis needs for their duties in developing out-year fire program budgets. Why is there a Management Advisory Team and an Interagency Science Team, aren't they the same? The Management Advisory Team provides business process guidance and helps ensure a strong link between the FPA project and the field through the Business Leads. The team is made up of agency line officers, fire management officers and state and regional budget planners. What happened to the issues identified in the review of FPA I? The review of FPA I included a scientific review and a management review. The Management Review combined the scientific and management findings and developed a number of recommendations to improve the process and architecture for the FPA system. The recommendations included developing advisory teams and business leads to help the project successfully develop and implement a new planning and budget system for wildland fire management. The interagency science team reviews the modeling approach and ensures it is appropriate and effective. The Interagency Science Team was created in August 2006. An interagency Executive Oversight Group was also recommended to assist the Wildland fire Leadership Council in overseeing management of FPA development. Two Business Lead positions were added to help communicate FPA information out to the field. The Interdisciplinary Science Team provides science support and direction to the FPA project. The science team reviews, evaluates and recommends conceptual designs, architectures, data sources, and analysis techniques. The IST is comprised of scientists from the USDA Forest Service, DOI US Geological Survey and academia. (Charter) The FPA system will enable local and national planners to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative fire management strategies for meeting fire and land management goals and objectives. Effectiveness will be assessed by performance measures. What is the difference between the FPA version 1 and version 2? Version 2 of the FPA is a comprehensive system that includes three key components of wildland fire: preparedness, prevention and fuels. This version uses simulation rather than optimization. Is the Weighting System from FPA-PM going to be used in this next version of FPA and if so, how will it be used? No, the weighting system from FPA-PM will not be used. What are EEPs? Are they considered predictors or targets? EEPs is the acronym for "Effectiveness, Efficiency and Performance measures." EEPs are used in the FPA system to measure the relative value of fire management alternatives. EEPS should be considered predictors not targets.
How will states be able to use FPA in the future? The FPA model was enhanced to facilitate state level cooperation. Fire planners can define their area of interest based on the collection of FMU's used for analysis. How are nonfederal partner resources and costs accounted for in the FPA analysis? State and other nonfederal resources are included in modeling prevention, initial attack and suppression impact on fire behavior. If the costs of the nonfederal resources are covered by federal agencies' budgets, they will be included when developing the federal agencies' budget requests for approval by Congress. Is FPA still only analyzing federal lands? Are non-federal lands that are being primarily protected by a federal agency as part of a "balance of acres" suppression agreement, or receiving federal funds through a grants program to conduct fuel hazard reduction treatmens, being included in the FPA fuels module? No, FPA is analyzing all land of participating agencies (including states) within the FPU. If federal funds are used on non-federal land for fuel treatments or "balance of acres" agreements, those acres and costs are included in the modelign process. FPA does not model non-federal lands treated using grant money because the focus is on FPU fire management budgets. If FPA is not going to analyze or develop the budget request/allocation for National Fire Plan grant projects, will there be an additional process where this funding will be requested? Will "other" request process include those protions of the FPU fire/fuels program and the State Office fire/fuels program not analyzed in FPA? Since FPA does not include grant projects or regional/state or national level programs in its modeling process, these budget requests will be made through established agency budget planning methods currently in use. What will be the appearance of the final analysis results package at the FPU level and the State Office level? How are th FPUs to use the results related to bidget requests through agency processes and budget allocations? FPA results are the associated resources and performance measures as identified within the system. These investment alternatives will be put together at the FPU level and programmatic review of the alternatives, the alternatives are ready to be incorporated into the national analysis. The final analysis will likely be a spreadsheet or similar display format, with maps to visually display the data. Funding is expected to continue to be distributed through the agencies normal allocation process. When will the FPA system be implemented? FPA will be implemented in stages. Currently, seven FPUs are implementing the full FPA system and providing feedback to the FPA team to "work the kinks out" in partnership with the Interagency Science Team and the FPUs. Nationally the FPA system will be implemented across the country by all five federal wildland fire agencies in June 2008. All FPUs will "run" the models between June 2008 and February 2009. The results of these "runs" will provide the data that will be used by the agency and bureau fire budget leads to "inform" the FY 2011 agency and bureau's fire budgets. What does it mean, "Inform the budget?" The investment alternatives developed by Fire Planning Units provide
important information about the funding the fire program components.
These alternatives will be analyzed at the national level. Using the
results from the national analysis, combined with information from the
other budget components of the fire program, will help make decisions
relative to cost-effectiveness and out-year performance. The results of
the national-level analysis will provide data to support fire planning, This means that the funding recommendations resulting from FPA alternatives analyzed at the national level are not the entire fire budget. They are recommended funding levels for those specific parts of the fire budget program being analyzed by FPA. As is always the case, budget recommendations sent by the agencies to the Office of Management & Budget (representing the President of the United States) are adjusted by the agencies based on direction OMB sends back. These adjusted budget requests are subsequently sent to Congress who makes the final appropriations decision. Therefore, FPA "informs the fire budget" rather than determines what the agencies' final budgets will be. I'm in an Fire Planning Unit (FPU) that hasn't been included in the prototype work, how can I learn more about FPA and what will be expected of our FPU? There are a multiple ways you can learn about FPA and keep up with the project's progress:
Guidance regarding FPU expectations is distributed through departmental memos and direct announcements through the project list service. To view Project guidance visit: http://www.fpa.nifc.gov/Library/Memos/index.html How will planners in the field get training for the FPA system? When will training begin? An aggressive FPA system training phase will begin in the spring of 2008. This training will use a full suite of tools, methods, and opportunities such as virtual learning, distance learning, and other new and current technology. As needed, training will be held at existing fire training facilities or local higher education facilities through partnership agreements. What is the average to maximum workload expected (based on staff hours) at the FPU level related to the June 2008 release of FPA in relation to: 1) the development of the options/alternatives; 2) the IA organization what will be put through initial response simulator; and 3) any data for the large fire simulator? The average maximum workload based on the input from the may 2007 Prototype FPU Workshop are:
Can the FPU and even the specific agency field units determine the ratio of resource use by final fire size from the results from FPA? This would include information related to the number of hours/days per initial attack (IA) incident, extended attack, and large fire. this would allow an FPU to determine the percent of availability resources for IA as compared to extended attack, large fire, and Wildland Fire Use. Outputs for Initial Response Simulator:
Outputs from Large Fire Module 0 including WFU:
What data are necessary from the field to use the FPA system? Fire Planning Units (FPUs) will need to provide:
How and when will information be shared with the field on FPA data needs, how the models work, and the expected workload to use the FPA system? Project information is shared through the FPA web site (http://www.fpa.nifc.gov/), listserv, and monthly newsletter as well as conference calls with stakeholder groups. The Project's two Business Leads are actively seeking scheduled agency meetings and workshops to share FPA information and ask for feedback. Please send ideas about these information exchange opportunities to Bonnie Wood (jbwood@fs.fed.us) or Jaymee Fojtik (Jaymee_Fojtik@blm.gov). Will NFPORS be used to pull first and fifth year treatments into FPA for each FPU to assist in displaying potential vegetation changes? If not, has an analysis been done to determine if NFPORS contains all the required data to allow FPUs to use NFPORS data to create the fuels alternatives without obtaining or creating additional data needs? No, NFPORS will not be used to pull first and fifth year treatments. NFPORS does not contain all the required data in order to automate the definition of fuel treatment areas for use in FPA. Does FPA intend to impose a standard whereby all location coordinates must be stored in WFMI (wildland fire management information) as decimal degrees/NAD83? No. How data are stored is not within the scope of the FPA mission. FPA Will be strictly a consumer of data, and has not intention of being involved in the management of agencies' systems of record. Decimal degrees is the most appropriate coordinated system for data input, use, and analysis because FPA will be conducting both local and national analyses. FPA is working with geospatial data in the NAD83 datum because it is the federal government standard datum. FPA intends to extract fire occurrence data from FAMWEB. what this means to FPA partner agencies is that they will be responsible for ensuring that an extract from their system of record will be available in FAMWEB to provide data for the time period to be used in the current analysis by an announced date. Does FPA still intend to develop a conversion utility that, upon receiving a data string with coordinates (in DD - won't be a problem) and a field specifying datum, will convert those coordinates to NAD83 (if not already in NAD83)? Yes. The current working understanding is that all geospatial data inputs used by FPA will be converted into decimal degrees, NAD83 as part of the input process. There is no plan to require a field in any system of record specifying datum, but each agency must be able to specify the datum their historical fire occurrence records are in. In other words, a tool will be designed to convert during the import process. If not, when do we need to have the widget built in WFMI that will allow us to export data with location coordinates converted to DD/NAD83? The FPA project has the understanding that each of the agencies' system of record will eventually be able to provide a data export in the decimal degrees, NAD83 format, but that this functionality will not be expected until the FORS standards are implemented. A fuels option consists of one or more fuels treatment projects. A fuels option is one of three investment variables (fuels, prevention and preparedness organization) used by the FPU to describe investment alternatives. A fuels option will include the total number of acres treated, the treatment cost, and the cost of the fuels program supporting those treatments. What is the intent of the fuels option? What does the fuels option do? The fuels options are analyzed as a potential investment in terms of impact on fire behavior that is the result of fuels treatment projects. The changes in fire behavior as a result of each fuels option will affect the outcomes of the Initial Response (IR) and Large Fire Simulators being used in FPA. The fuels option will be combined with an IR option, and a prevention option to form an alternative. FPA will analyze each alternative in terms of their impact on fire starts and fire behavior. Will the FPA system capture low percentage changes in fuels? Initial testing shows that low percentage changes in fuels condition do not have a significant impact on fire behavior as modeled by the Initial Response Simulator. Continued system and model sensitivity testing across many FPUs with varied fuels conditions will help determine the effectiveness of fuels treatments across the landscape. What can FPUs do to show results from minor fuels treatment projects? Planners can:
Is it better to use percent change or spatial data for fuels information when doing an analysis? Either percent treated or spatial data are acceptable data formats as input to the Initial Response Simulator. The large fire simulator uses only percent change within a fuel type. Testing will determine if there is a measurable difference in outcomes. What Fire Behavior Prediction System (FBPS) fuel model can I use with the FPA system? The FPA fire modules can use either Fire Behavior Prediction System 13 (FBPS13) or FBPS40 FPUs may use the system they are familiar with using. The FPA system does not accept a combination of the two FBPS. Do I need canopy characteristics to run the FPA system? Not all FPUs have canopy characteristic data available. No, you do not need canopy characteristics to run the FPA system. Simulations may be run using just the surface fuels. However, the FPA system performs best when surface fuel models are coupled with canopy characteristics Will I be able to compare the effects of maintenance fuels treatments vs. no maintenance? The FPA system enables an FPU planner to analyze how maintenance fuels treatments affect fire behavior. The fuels option will enable to depict to the planner how fuels conditions change as a result of treatments and how they will change naturally if treatments are delayed or do not occur. Some treatments have a longer lasting effect than others, is duration of treatment effectiveness going to be included in the FPA system? We have not been able to find a way to include duration of treatment effectiveness at this time. How current does the landscape fuels information need to be? Since landscape fuels information is one of the key data inputs used by the FPA system, the most effective analyses will use current landscape fuels information. The enterprise fuels data will be resampled to 270-meter cells for FPA use FPUs will use the most current LANDFIRE data available to perform their FPA analysis. Data may be LANDFIRE, Rapid Refresh LANDFIRE, or Refresh LANDFIRE all resampled to 270-meter cells. Rapid Refresh
Refresh
Biennial Updates
Decadal Update
Project information is shared through the FPA web site (http://www.fpa.nifc.gov/), listserv, and monthly newsletter as well as conference calls with stakeholder groups. The Project's two Business Leads are actively seeking scheduled agency meetings and workshops to share FPA information and ask for feedback. Please send ideas about these information exchange opportunities to Bonnie Wood (jbwood@fs.fed.us) or Jaymee Fojtik (Jaymee_Fojtik@blm.gov). |
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