Governance of wildland fire decision support tools: lessons learned from the risk management assistance dashboard

Abstract

Wildfire management organizations expand their use of decision support tools (DSTs) in decision-making, yet DST effectiveness depends not only on their analytical capabilities but how they fit within institutional, cultural, and policy contexts. One such tool, the Risk Management Assistance (RMA) Dashboard was designed to support risk-informed strategy development for wildfire incidents. While prior research has focused primarily on end-users, far less is known about how producers of RMA and U.S. Forest Service leadership perceive, guide, and communicate the tool, and how these perspectives shape its governance and integration across the wildfire system. We conducted semi-structured interviews with oversight committee members and coaches to examine definitions and conceptions of RMA, its impacts and trade-offs, and its position within broader institutional processes. Results show that it is simultaneously a suite of analytical products, a community of practitioners, and an evolving approach to wildfire decision-making. Leaders identify benefits—such as enhanced risk transparency, proactive planning, and strengthened feedback loops between developers and users—while also acknowledging trade-offs inherent to RMA's informal, non-mandatory structure, including inconsistent adoption by intended users, and reliance on interpersonal networks. We interpret these findings through intertwined lenses of institutional theory, knowledge governance, policy implementation, and agile software development, highlighting that the challenge facing RMA is not technological but institutional. Fully realizing RMA's potential will require complementary investments in organizational capacity, boundary-spanning roles, and processes capable of scaling innovation without sacrificing the agility that enabled its success.