FEMA, Addressing Wildfire Risk
Colorado School Of Mines, Fall 2020
Problem Statement
The Montana Forest Action Advisory Council needs recommendations to offer to agencies and other partners on how to best work together across ownership boundaries to address wildfire risk and forest health issues while representing the values of a diverse array of interests.
Problem Scoping and Discovery
Based on discovery interviews within FEMA, the team learned that a major pain point involved sub-optimal application of funding to this problem over the past 20 years. They identified 4 obstacles to optimization; vision, data accessibility, data clarity & non-comparative data.
Outcome
The team developed a graphical way to compare wildfire risk, project funding and population density to organize and optimize the impact of wildfire mitigation funding. The team developed a database addressing the four obstacles of vision, organization, data & standardization.
Results / Next Steps
The team’s recommendation informs and compliments current FEMA Region VIII efforts to implement more purposeful data organization & tracking procedures. FEMA recently added a data management billet to address data issues and implement the recommended solution.