Truckee Fire Protection District Builds Consensus in Record Time
Vibrant Planet worked with the Truckee FireProtection District to create a Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) in 9 short weeks.
Truckee Fire realized their need for an accelerated, collaborative CWPP refresh required a modern solution. The district partnered with Vibrant Planet to deploy a cloud-based scenario-building and decision-support tool for prioritizing hazardous fuel reduction treatments.
In using the science-based platform, the district has dramatically streamlined its stakeholder collaboration process while ensuring its CWPP reflects the collaborative’s diverse priorities. Harnessing a specialized data curation process led by Vibrant Planet and Truckee Fire, industry-leading wildfire modeling from Pyrologix, and collaborative planning using the decision-support tool, the CWPP prioritizes projects at the treatment unit-level with the highest stakeholder-weighted societal value.
The Challenge
Truckee Fire realized their need for an accelerated, collaborative CWPP refresh required a modern solution. The district partnered with Vibrant Planet to deploy a cloud-based scenario-building and decision-support tool for prioritizing hazardous fuel reduction treatments.
In using the science-based platform, the district has dramatically streamlined its stakeholder collaboration process while ensuring its CWPP reflects the collaborative’s diverse priorities. Harnessing a specialized data curation process led by Vibrant Planet and Truckee Fire, industry-leading wildfire modeling from Pyrologix, and collaborative planning using the decision-support tool, the CWPP prioritizes projects at the treatment unit-level with the highest stakeholder-weighted societal value.
The Solution
Truckee Fire realized their need for an accelerated, collaborative CWPP refresh required a modern solution. The district partnered with Vibrant Planet to deploy a cloud-based scenario-building and decision-support tool for prioritizing hazardous fuel reduction treatments.
In using the science-based platform, the district has dramatically streamlined its stakeholder collaboration process while ensuring its CWPP reflects the collaborative’s diverse priorities. Harnessing a specialized data curation process led by Vibrant Planet and Truckee Fire, industry-leading wildfire modeling from Pyrologix, and collaborative planning using the decision-support tool, the CWPP prioritizes projects at the treatment unit-level with the highest stakeholder-weighted societal value.
The Results
Enhancing and accelerating collaboration
Traditionally, finding consensus among 15+ CWPP stakeholders is complex / time-consuming. Truckee Fire rapidly gained consensus with the core project team of agencies and is accelerating engagement with broader stakeholders and the public by leveraging Vibrant Planet’s collaborative planning platform. Truckee Fire and its partners, including the Forest Service and private landowners, assign priorities depending on specific land use contexts, such as protecting physical assets or biodiversity, and create treatment scenarios without laborious planning sessions. The district then uses the consensus scenario function to efficiently identify areas of common ground and can bring neighboring jurisdictions into the planning process, overcoming past limitations of CWPPs.
Prioritizing Truckee’s unique needs
Truckee Fire takes its responsibility for community safety seriously and prioritizes its specially designated WUI while excluding treatments within residential areas. Vibrant Planet identified treatments with the greatest impact in Truckee’s WUI by uploading it as a “Strategic Area”with a 150m digital residential buffer.
Adapting to changing landscapes
Landscape changes and unplanned disturbances can quickly render vegetation treatment plans that protect communities obsolete, yet CWPPs often take years to update. Additionally, static CWPPs cannot readily incorporate disturbances or land use amendments. Vibrant Planet’s ability to intake new remote sensing data, updated fuels hazard models, and current landscape conditions meets Truckee Fire’s demand fora dynamic CWPP that maintains relevance.
