Comparing alternative budget allocation models to support strategic wildland fire program analysis across US National Parks

Abstract

Hazard fuel reduction and wildland fire preparedness programs are two important budgeting components in the US National Park Service strategic wildland fire planning. During the planning process, each national park independently conducts analysis to understand the benefits from investing in each program to mitigate fire risks and improve ecosystem benefits. The national program analysis imports the cost-effective frontiers of investment in both programs from each national park. The national program then allocates cost-effective funding to the parks and implements required national policies while minimizing disruption to current programs of work. In this study, we test and compare two alternative modeling methods for budget allocation between the fuel treatment and preparedness programs responding to changes in funding levels nationally. One approach uses a nonlinear programming model (NLP) to maximize the benefits of investments in both programs with a set of feasibility constraints. The other approach uses a simulation-based gradient method to manage program budget changes. Both approaches are designed to focus on national level program efficiency while mitigating potential program disruptions; however, different approaches suggest different budgeting allocation strategies. This study compares the trade-offs between efficiency and the level of disruption of different budget allocation methods. Discoveries could help managers to select and implement an efficient and viable analytical system to study the value of funding increases, the cost of budget reductions, and guide landscape allocations. It will also identify national impacts by accumulating allocations to individual units across the national parks in the United States.

A Potential Framework for Allocating National Park Service Budgets

“…The program surfaces (Figure 4) were generated by interpolating the STARFire analysis results for each park. We extended the methods developed by Wei et al (2016) to generate a gradient that rewards proportionate performance and to support the budgeting of the national parks. The gradient was applied to linear-log functions to allocate a zone budget to individual parks, which were then allocated to different park programs following the path with the highest ROI increases per dollar invested.…”

“…Traditionally, fuels management and preparedness have been considered in isolation from one another (Calkin and Gebert, 2006;Gebert et al, 2008;Chung, 2015). Recent research suggests that these two elements of wildland fire management are strongly interrelated (Rideout et al, 2008;Minas et al, 2015;Wei et al, 2016), for example, fuels programs affect preparedness efforts by reducing fire spread rates and fire intensity. As such, this interaction should be considered in budgeting efforts.…”