Abstract
Increases in wildland fire frequency, size and duration have increased the threat of wildfire impacts to human and natural resource values and strained wildland firefighting resources. The increasing complexity seen in wildland fire management has highlighted the importance of sound decision-making based on best available science. Numerous fire management decision support systems have been developed to enhance science and technology delivery and assist fire managers with decision-making tasks. However, no scientific efforts have evaluated their adoption by fire managers. Drawing upon decision support system implementation research and in-depth interviews with U.S. Forest Service fire managers, we explore their perceptions regarding the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS). Although fire managers appreciate many of the components of WFDSS, they view WFDSS as primarily useful for documenting fire management decisions and often experience on-the-ground actions that are disconnected with decisions developed or documented in WFDSS. Fire managers furthermore attribute these concerns to factors related to the timeliness of WFDSS outputs, the complexity of the WFDSS design, and the manner in which WFDSS was implemented. We discuss how these challenges may be addressed by improving training and top management support for WFDSS as well as better matching WFDSS capabilities and complexity to fire manager needs and abilities by increasing the user-friendliness of WFDSS and supporting more proactive decision support tools. We conclude by describing how future efforts to develop FMDSS may benefit from this research as well as the broader literature surrounding DSS implementation.