Improving WFDSS Incident Objectives and Requirements

Examination of wildland fire incident decisions revealed that most incident objectives are written general enough that they could apply to any fire in the country. This makes them of little use to incident management teams in developing strategies and tactics to achieve an agency administrator's intent for managing a specific fire and for agency administrators seeking to clarify the objectives they want accomplished. Similarly, strategic objectives and management requirements, established from forest plans, are the basis for incident objectives and incident requirements but are rarely written with wildland fire specificity. This decreases the likelihood that NEPA-based management direction is adequately implemented on a wildfire or as intended. It also increases the likelihood of additional risk to firefighters with marginal benefit. 

A systematic evaluation of wildfire incident decisions was undertaken during the 2014 fire season, to better understand the situation and recommend solutions. This included site visits to 23 fires and interviews of agency administrators, incident commanders and WFDSS authors. An analysis of all objectives in the WFDSS database as of May 2014 was also conducted. Findings from this work are summarized in the following briefing paper while more explanation and detail can be found in the Improving WFDSS Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements and Relaying Leader's Intent White Paper.

USDA FS Briefing Paper - Wildland Fire Decision Making Incident Objectives & Incident Requirements

White Paper - Improving WFDSS Incident Objectives & Incident Requirements and Relaying Leader's Intent