Integrating values and risk perceptions into a decision support system
Barbara J. Morehouse A E , Sara O’Brien B , Gary Christopherson C and Peter Johnson D
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A Institute for the Environment, PO Box 210 158, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
B Defenders of Wildlife, 1880 Willamette Falls Rd, #200, West Linn, OR 97068, USA.
C Center for Applied Spatial Analysis, School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, PO Box 210076, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
D City of Tucson, Department of Transportation, 201 North Stone, Tucson, AZ 85701, USA.
E Corresponding author. Email: morehoub@email.arizona.edu
International Journal of Wildland Fire 19(1) 123-136 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF08064
Submitted: 26 April 2008 Accepted: 30 July 2009 Published: 5 February 2010
Abstract
One of the thorniest challenges to effective wildland fire management is integration of public perceptions and values into science-based adaptive management. One promising alternative is incorporation of public values into place-based decision support technologies that are accessible to lay citizens as well as to fire-management experts. A survey of individuals, including residents, fire and fuels managers, volunteer firefighters, and others living in or near four mountain areas of the US Southwest, identified a set of personal values and perceptions about wildland fire risk that could be spatially represented in a geographic information science-based decision support system designed for wildland fire strategic planning efforts. We define values, in this context, as phenomena that are not necessarily quantifiable but that strongly attract and connect individuals for whatever reasons to particular areas. Inclusion of this type of information into interactive decision tools for fire management may contribute to improved understanding and finer-scale spatial visualisation of public perceptions of fire risk. The integration of such factors in decision support tools offers opportunities for improving interactions between managers and the public involved in strategic planning processes for fire management.
Additional keywords: geographic information science model, strategic planning, US Southwest.
Acknowledgements
The research and development activities described in this paper were funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency under its Science to Achieve Results program, grant #GR82873201-0. The work reported in this paper owes much to the graduate research assistants who conducted the interviews, the students associated with the University of Arizona’s Center for Applied Spatial Analysis who digitised the data, to the team of investigators and researchers involved in building FCS-1, and to the staff editor who proofread this paper.
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A In this study, we define perceptions as individual awareness and personal understanding of the social and ecological dynamics of wildland fire as well as the risks that may accompany these dynamics. (For a review of perception studies of wildland fire, see
Daniel 2007.) We define values as the not necessarily quantifiable worth, importance, esteem or utility that individuals accord to phenomena, for whatever reason. In our case, these values contribute to social constructions of wildland fire risk.
B AHP overcomes the problem of how to compare variables that are not intrinsically comparable by allowing like variables to be grouped into submodels and weighted within those submodels. Thus, in the case of FCS-1, users can weight the fire probability variables separately from what the Forest Service terms ‘values at risk’ (property value, recreation, animal habitat, and personal landscape values), but at the same time indicate the relative importance of the two submodels for strategic planning purposes. It is this last comparison that integrates the various model components into a single risk map.
C We note here that the values at risk title for this latter submodel emerged from interactions that occurred during early model evaluation meetings attended by fire experts and managers: participants were clearly most comfortable with this term.
D As we noted earlier in this paper, we define values in this context as not necessarily quantifiable phenomena that strongly attract and bind individuals to the areas in question.
