Opportunity Recognition

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Opportunity Recognition Danger or Opportunity: Oppor tunity: Examining how We We Perceive Large Fires Good Situational Awareness (SA) is the rst step in the decision making process.  This is based on observing and communicating what is seen, heard and felt. This allows the match of perception of the environment as closely as possible to the reality of the environment. This is a complicated process as humans tend to make decisions based on perception (observation + communication + emotion) and not necessarily on reality. reality. Good SA equals good perception and ultimately good decisions. A common perception of re managers and line ocers is that unwanted large res must be aggressively suppressed. Simply put . . . Fire Fire = Danger. Any other course of action, its felt, will sail into a sea fraught with failure and promote a negative public reaction. Many feel it is important to be perceived by the public to be doing everything possible to deal with the unwanted, unplanned re (danger).  This is described in literature as the “Precautionary Principle.” Principle.” An unwanted re in the wrong place at the wrong time is truly a danger. Recognizing this, the Agency has designed an aggressive and eective approach to initial attack and will continue to aggressively suppress problematic res. Ironically, the ability to successfully suppress the majority m ajority of the th e res that occur, has allowed a drift into complacency in decision making by automatically engaging the suppression machine before mindful decisions about the eects of the re are made. Often re is perceived to be a danger simply because it triggers dramatic change and disrupts our lives. Therefore, it is easy to choose to “ght” the re through the application of overwhelming mass. The language used reinforces reinforces this behavior. behavior.  There is a battle to contain the wildre that is “burning out of control” and “threatening” the forest. The reliance on abundance of aircraft and ground crews gives the impression it is possible to sail into safer waters, away from negative public perception, away from danger. The perception is as follows . . . more re = more reghters. However, there is now a more broadly held understanding of the reality of re. Fire However, is important and necessary. Almost all of the vegetation and ecosystems in United States are re adapted and/or re evolved. evolved. Fire belongs belongs here. Fire has always been and will always be a part of the landscape. Native Americans used re regularly. regularly. European settlers brought a negative perception of re which is still pervasive in this country. The longer re is out of the equation, the greater the impact when it is included. That is reality. reality. Fire is not always good, re is not always bad. It just is. Like rain, too little or too much can be harmful. But, what if re was perceived as opportunity? What if this latest escaped re was seen as an opportunity to nally allow re on the landscape, to reset the ecological clock. This re could allow for a more “reproof” community which no longer had to stop worrying every summer about evacuations. This re could allow stronger bonds with neighbors and bring the community together.

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Opportunity Recognition Imagine if every re was viewed as an opportunity to think carefully about when, where and how much risk the lives of our young men and women should be exposed to? Often the risk from the values to be protected (infrastructure, threat to an endangered species, historic cabin, etc) is transferred directly to the reghters and into the cockpits of aircraft. What is truly a greater danger (risk); a closed highway or 100 reghters and multiple aircraft working to keep the highway open?  This leads to a simple question when looking at a re; is the danger real or perceived; is aggressively suppressing the re truly worth the risk? An excerpt from a recent article in the December edition of the Journal of Forestry: “External Human Factors in Incident Management Team Decision Making and Their Eect on Large Fire Suppression Expenditures” accurately depicts the decision dilemma. “Sociologist W. W. I. Thomas wrote, “If men dene things as real, they are real in their th eir consequences” (as cited by McHugh McHugh 1968, p. 7). Because perceptions are reality in a person’s mind, decisions are made based on those perceptions. This means a tendency toward risk aversion and a shrinking pool of midlevel re managers may continue, as will increase costs, unless the perception is changed. chan ged.”

Basing Strategy and Tactics on Recognizing Opportunity  Traditional wildland re strategies start with an anchor point and then require an ever-increasing insertion of people and equipment until either a direct or indirect line is completed. This traditional strategy is based on Agency Administrator and incident managers’ man agers’ perceptions of threats (dangers) and rarely considers the naturally pre-determined, and possibly inevitable, path of the re.

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Opportunity Recognition Consider if a strategy was developed based on hot, dry and unstable weather,  Type I crews and aviation resources being in short supply and recognition that the frightened public is reacting emotionally to their perceptions of the danger of re and smoke? Consider whether this strategy would not transfer risk to reghters? reghters? And, whether the strategy developed would not saddle the taxpayers with the nancial burden of a multi-million dollar re? What would that strategy look like? Additionally, what if the strategy saw re as an inevitable occurrence and the re was managed with the view that considered the next re as pre-determined and inevitable. This more enlightened strategy would recognize the role of re in shaping vegetation and ecosystems, yielding a re management strategy that considered all risks, opportunities and outcomes, rather than just “ghting the re, or battling the ames.

A Large Fire Story Initial Attack of the Big Pine Fire was unsuccessful. unsuccessful. The IMT was able to protect protect the nearby community but nine days later only 40 percent of the re is contained and the remainder is in rough terrain. Rain is 4-6 weeks weeks out. The re is not going away anytime soon and, frankly, a few Red Flag days could make the situation worse. The re could make another run at the community if several factors line up. Six hundred reghters reghters are committed to the incident. The cost to date is $6 million and the daily cost rate is $900,000. Smoke is impacting the adjacent National Park. The Governor has called, twice. What is your perception; one of  danger or one of opportunity? Either way, now is the time to develop a very clear and succinct strategy. Identify the values at risk. Identify the dangers and then look at the opportunities. There are a number of non-traditional strategies that may oer opportunities.

Recognizing Opportunity Flashing back to the Big Pine Fire, why wait for the inevitable Red Flag conditions? Knowing overwhelming mass is going to be ineective in the rough terrain and knowing an alignment of conditions will create a negative outcome, then where are the opportunities? Where could and should the appropriate amount of force be applied? Where are the trigger points that can prevent the next run at town? Is the insertion of small mobile assets to signicantly alter the undesirable scenario possible? Are there options to check, direct and delay with minimal reghter reghter exposure? Just because the anks can be secured, will it make any dierence to the community? Scientist and analyst have made great strides in technology and predictive services in the last few years. Decision makers now have the ability to identify windows of opportunity. Surgically applying burn-out operations, securing a key piece of 

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Opportunity Recognition ground or expanding and contracting suppression resources, to be in the right place at that right time, is now a realistic approach.  Traditional burn-outs have an anchor point and a tie-in point. This common-sense approach is safe and eective eective and has been used for decades. It works on the vast majority of res. Some res, especially especially the large, long duration res may warrant unanchored burn-outs that target fuel reduction and re behavior mitigation and not necessarily perimeter containment. These actions can mitigate re and suppression impacts, ensure community protection and can be done under the most favorable conditions. This is in contrast to waiting on the re while fuels become drier and the probability of experiencing Red Flag conditions is near 100 percent. Choose the ground ground to hold very carefully. Remember size is less important than positive or negative impacts on the landscape. Place re on the ground ground on re management terms not on the re’s re’s terms. Don’t wait until the re is at the edge of what is at risk; don’t don’t be reactive. Consider a well-planned night burn-out.  Timing can limit costly and often unnecessary un necessary “line prep” prep” by nding the right r ight ground. If the land is under a dierent ownership work with the landowner to achieve a reasonable objective, explain to the landowner the idea of opportunity. Large res often cost more than $1 million/day. million/day. Find a way to explain your your predicament to the land owner. It is after all, their tax money. Do a cost analysis, is “buying” the good ground more cost eective? eective? Run it up the decision tree and see what happens. Favorable Fav orable fuels + good ground + Predictive Services = Opportunity Heavy fuels + bad ground + reacting = Increased Fireghter Exposure

When developing a large re strategy, plan for allowing ICS to expand and contract as it was intended. Designate Trigger Trigger Points and Management Action Points (MAPs) that are designed to activate the necessary resources/actions at the right time and at the right place. For re ground decision makers, it is important to view this one re as a small component of a much larger puzzle: a puzzle that includes long-term ecological impacts, as well as short-term fears and perceptions, and is able to recognize and act upon opportunity.

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Social Networking Community - Agency Interaction A Joint Fire Science project conducted on Forest Service res in 2008 explored how community-agency interaction inuenced the exercise of Appropriate Management Response. This was evaluated from the forest, incident management team and the community perspectives. As a result of the research, several recommendations have been made with the hypothesis that initiating the recommended actions will result in better understanding and support of re management activities. The recommendations recommendations included: •



Pre-season interaction with communities around re-prone areas; Manage community and cooperator expectations before an event occurs;



More timely and widespread dissemination of information; and



Better coordination and information sharing internally and externally.

Data collected in 2008 will be used to craft a survey that will be administered in 2009 to a broader segment of the public in three, re-aected communities.  This will allow for a systematic and comprehensively approach to assess public attitudes about re management strategies and tactics and also will help determine if the above noted recommendations improved community-agency interaction.

Network Mapping Network Mapping is how we build a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specic types of relationships. In this case, we are interested in relationships or ties related to wildre. Nodes are the individuals within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the individuals. There can be many kinds of relationships between these individuals: work, social, family, common interests, etc. Social networks operate on many levels and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals. In its simplest form, a social network is a map of individuals that serves as a visual tool to identify those whom with they communicate and the type of relationships they have. Visual representation of social networks is important to be able to see the strengths and weaknesses of your your communications. Seeing the people you talk  to and the relationships you have, laid out in a map, makes it obvious where the bottlenecks are and where good communication ows.  There are two primary benets of network mapping. First it can identify where communication breakdowns are occurring between and within groups; and second it can identify individuals with knowledge that might be useful, but are not being tapped.

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