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RMRS Black and White Graphic ElementRocky Mountain Research Station

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Mailing Address:

Forestry Sciences Lab
800 E. Beckwith Ave
Missoula, Montana 59801

(406) 542-4150

Welcome to Rapid Assessment of Values-at-Risk
(WFDSS-RAVAR)

Zaca RAVAR

 

 

[Click image to enlarge]

One of eight maps produced during the progress of the Zaca Fire, Santa Barbara County CA. This large, long-duration incident threatened thousands of homes, oil and gas pipelines, communication towers, municipal supply watersheds, and dozens of recreation and historic sites.

 

RAVAR is the primary fire economics tool within the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS). RAVAR was developed by the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Missoula Forestry Sciences Lab. RAVAR identifies the primary resource values threatened by ongoing large fire events. RAVAR is typically integrated with the FSPro model to identify the likelihood of different resources being impacted in the potential fire path of an ongoing event but can be linked to any expected fire spread polygon.

WFDSS LogoRAVAR was initially tested in 2005 with increased testing and prototype applications delivered during the 2006, 2007 and 2008 seasons. During the active fire season of 2007, over 100 RAVAR reports were delivered through the web-based WFDSS to fire events in real time. The WFDSS was developed by the Forest Service and is currently being adopted by Department of Interior agencies.

RAVAR can help agency administrators, incident managers, and fire planners develop wildland fire suppression strategies by rapidly identifying and quantifying the significant resource values most likely to be threatened by an ongoing fire event. In the area command setting, RAVAR has been shown to be useful in prioritizing fires for assignment of scarce suppression resources. Additionally, RAVAR can help support the development of Long Term Implementation Plans (LTIP), and will be a critical component of the WFDSS as the system transitions to replace the Wildland Fire Situation Analysis in 2009. More.

 

 

USDA Forest Service - Rocky Mountain Research Station
Last Modified: Thursday, 18 September 2008 at 17:48:27 EDT
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