‘Any prediction is better than none’? A study of the perceptions of fire behaviour analysis users in Australia

Abstract

Internationally, fire and land management agencies are increasingly using forms of predictive services to inform wildfire planning and operational response. This trend is particularly pronounced in Australia where, over the past two decades, there has been an alignment between increases in investments in fire behaviour analysis tools, the training and development of fire behaviour analysts (FBANs), and official inquiries recommending the expanded use of these tools and analysts. However, while there is a relative lack of scholarship on the utilisation of predictive services, existing research suggests that institutional investment and availability are poor indicators of use in contexts with established social dynamics of trust and authority. To better understand the utilisation of predictive services in Australia, we undertook a survey of key predictive services users (e.g. incident controllers, planning officers) in order to test several hypotheses developed from existing studies and ethnographic fieldwork. Our results provide directions for further research and indicate that, rather than simply invest in tools and systems, there is a need for fire management agencies to foster personal connection between predictive services practitioners, their tools and their users.

Use of the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) for full suppression and managed fires within the Southwestern Region of the US Forest Service

“…Similar dynamics were observed in Noble and Paveglio (2020) and are noted in other DSS literature (e.g. Alavi and Joachimsthaler 1992;Neale et al 2021). Future research should explore this 'grey area' of professional judgement in wildfire decision making by exploring users' trust in or use of specific quantitative outputs from WFDSS.…”

“…experience, intuition, trust in model outputs), situational factors (e.g. time constraints, political pressure), or training opportunities for complex programs all influence the ways decision makers incorporate the objective, risk-informed outcomes that a DSS is intended to create (see for example Alavi and Joachimsthaler 1992;Thompson and Calkin 2011;Dulcic et al 2012;Neale et al 2021). The result can be variability in the adoption of WFDSS outputs or use of WFDSS to justify decisions made based on professional experience.…”

“…Paradoxically, technological advances such as widespread internet connectivity, advances in fire behaviour modelling, real-time resource tracking or video feeds and social media influences can inundate fire managers with information when making decisions. The result is a critical need to evaluate how end users of technological advances in decision support utilise or struggle to incorporate new information into fire management practices (Rapp et al 2020;Neale et al 2021).…”

Mapping the ethical landscape of wildland fire management: setting an agendum for research and deliberation on the applied ethics of wildland fire

“…The growing use of predictive risk modelling and other algorithmic approaches (see Kennedy 2020) may further obscure the subjective nature of risk. Computational modelling already embodies tensions around risk tolerance, particularly with key wildland fire questions that compare timeliness versus accuracy (Neale et al 2021) and reveal how models must be interpreted through personal values. Additionally, the dynamic impact of climate change (Littell et al 2018) and changing settlement patterns can trouble conventional ways of approaching these calculations, forcing increasingly subjective calls about how much precaution is prudent.…”

Wildfire Rates of Spread in Grasslands under Critical Burning Conditions

“…Under certain combinations of environmental conditions [19], wildfires and especially those spreading in cured grasslands can quickly impact rural communities with little or no warning. In such cases, traditional predictive fire spread capacity [29][30][31] may not be capable of issuing timely emergency warnings to the general public in advance of a rapidly spreading grassfire impacting them and the community's values-at-risk [14,32].…”