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Burn-over crew protection systems have been installed into fleets of rural wildland Fire-Fighting Vehicles (FFVs) in parts of Australia, successfully providing protection for crews in recent large fires. Research out of the Country Fire Authority (…
Author(s): Andrew Webb, Andy Gooden
Year Published:

Purpose of Review: The objectives of this paper are to briefly review basic risk management and analytics concepts, describe their nexus in relation to wildfire response, demonstrate real-world application of analytics to support response decisions…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Yu Wei, David E. Calkin, Christopher D. O'Connor, Christopher J. Dunn, Nathaniel M. Anderson, John S. Hogland
Year Published:

A modelling framework to spatially score the impacts from wildland fire effects on specific resources and assets was developed for and applied to the province of Ontario, Canada. This impact model represents the potential ‘loss’, which can be used…
Author(s): Colin B. McFayden, Den Boychuk, Douglas G. Woolford, Melanie J. Wheatley, Lynn Johnston
Year Published:

Currently, limited research on large-fire suppression effectiveness suggests fire managers may over-allocate resources relative to values to be protected. Coupled with observations that weather may be more important than resource abundance to…
Author(s): Hari Katuwal, Christopher J. Dunn, David E. Calkin
Year Published:

Wildland firefighting in the United States is a complex and costly enterprise. While there are strong seasonal signatures for fire occurrence in specific regions of the United States, spatiotemporal occurrence of wildfire activity can have high…
Author(s): Crystal S. Stonesifer, David E. Calkin, Michael S. Hand
Year Published:

Uncertainties are pervasive in natural hazards, and it is crucial to develop robust and meaningful approaches to characterize and communicate uncertainties to inform modeling efforts. In this monograph we provide a broad, cross-disciplinary overview…
Author(s): Karen L. Riley, Matthew P. Thompson, Peter Webley, Kevin D. Hyde
Year Published:

Modeling can play a critical role in assessing and mitigating risks posed by natural hazards. These modeling efforts generally aim to characterize the occurrence, intensity, and potential consequences of natural hazards. Uncertainties surrounding…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Jord J. Warmink
Year Published:

Wildland firefighting is an inherently dangerous activity, and aviation-related accidents in particular comprise a large share of firefighter fatalities. Due to limited understanding of operational factors that lead to aviation accidents, it is…
Author(s): Crystal S. Stonesifer, David E. Calkin, Matthew P. Thompson, Jeffrey D. Kaiden
Year Published:

Stochastic simulations of wildfire occurrence and growth have become an integral part of both wildfire incident management and land management planning applications. The FSPro simulation system, implemented in the online Wildland Fire Decision…
Author(s): Joe H. Scott
Year Published:

Wildland fire management has moved beyond a singular focus on suppression, calling for wildfire management for ecological benefit where no critical human assets are at risk. Processes causing direct effects and indirect, long-term ecosystem changes…
Author(s): Kevin D. Hyde, Matthew B. Dickinson, Gil Bohrer, David E. Calkin, Louisa Evers, Julie W. Gilbertson-Day, Tessa Nicolet, Kevin C. Ryan, Christina Tague
Year Published:

A goal of fire management in wilderness is to allow fire to play its natural ecological role without intervention. Unfortunately, most unplanned ignitions in wilderness are suppressed, in part because of the risk they might pose to values outside of…
Author(s): Kevin M. Barnett
Year Published:

Spatially explicit burn probability modeling is increasingly applied to assess wildfire risk and inform mitigation strategy development. Burn probabilities are typically expressed on a per-pixel basis, calculated as the number of times a pixel burns…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Joe H. Scott, Jeffrey D. Kaiden, Julie W. Gilbertson-Day
Year Published:

Wildfire management in the United States and elsewhere is challenged by substantial uncertainty regarding the location and timing of fire events, the socioeconomic and ecological consequences of these events, and the costs of suppression. Escalating…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson
Year Published:

Federal policy has embraced risk management as an appropriate paradigm for wildfire management. Economic theory suggests that over repeated wildfire events, potential economic costs and risks of ecological damage are optimally balanced when…
Author(s): Matthew J. Wibbenmeyer, Michael S. Hand, David E. Calkin, Tyron J. Venn, Matthew P. Thompson
Year Published:

This publication focuses on the thought processes and considerations surrounding a risk management process for decision making on wildfires. The publication introduces a six element risk management cycle designed to encourage sound risk-informed…
Author(s): Mary A. Taber, Lisa M. Elenz, Paul G. Langowski
Year Published:

Wildland fire management in the United States has historically been a challenging and complex program governed by a multitude of factors including situational status, objectives, operational capability, science and technology, and changes and…
Author(s): Tom Zimmerman
Year Published:

Development of appropriate management strategies for escaped wildland fires is complex. Fire managers need the ability to identify, in real time, the likelihood that wildfire will affect valuable developed and natural resources (e.g., private…
Author(s): David E. Calkin, Matthew P. Thompson, Mark A. Finney, Kevin D. Hyde
Year Published:

A cornerstone of effective institutional learning and accountability is the development, tracking, and analysis of informative performance measures. In a previous issue of Fire Management Today ("A New Look at Risk Management," Winter 2011), a…
Author(s): David E. Calkin, John Phipps, Thomas P. Holmes, Jon D. Rieck, Matthew P. Thompson
Year Published:

Federal agency policy requires documentation and analysis of all wildland fire response decisions. In the past, planning and decision documentation for fires were completed using multiple unconnected processes, yielding many limitations. In response…
Author(s): Morgan Pence, Tom Zimmerman
Year Published:

Thousands of firefighters across the United States have been influenced by the first edition of “Managing the Unexpected”. In this second edition, the authors continue their analysis of high reliability organizations (HRO’s), which are organizations…
Author(s): Karl E. Weick, Kathleen Sutcliffe
Year Published: