Creating Incident Objectives and Requirements

Writing WFDSS Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements that are relevant to the incident and relay leader's intent are fundamental to successful wildland fire management, setting the purpose for actions and intended outcomes. Avoid generic statements that could apply anywhere, and write clearly so that Incident Commanders can develop strategies and tactics to achieve the Agency Administrator's intent for managing that incident. Site-specific Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements should tier from the over-arching Land/Resource Management Plan guidance for your unit; which is conveyed in WFDSS through the Strategic Objectives and Management Requirements. When a unit develops clear, specific direction through Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements that stem from the Strategic Objectives and Management Requirements, those managing the fire can, in turn, develop strategies and tactics that are in alignment with planning direction and leader's intent.

You can prioritize incident objectives by selecting an objective and clicking the Move Up or Move Down button at the bottom of the screen. To do this, make sure that the default number of rows indicated at the bottom of the page is equal to or exceeds the number of objectives and/or requirements. Otherwise, this feature is limited to only the rows displaying on the current page.

-----------
Last updated on 10/17/2019 11:08:32 AM.

Who is Responsible for Creating Incident Objectives and Requirements?

Although Incident Authors, Owners and Editors can enter Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements in WFDSS, it is ultimately the Agency Administrator's responsibility to ensure the WFDSS Decision follows policy and guidance and reflects their intent.

When developing Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements include input from various resource specialists or other staff. Informed input allows for the creation of better objectives, and can give resource specialists and managers the opportunity to express their concerns and associated mitigations that may be necessary. In the absence of an interdisciplinary team of resource specialists, the Author can utilize the Values Inventory from the creation of the Planning Area to inform Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements. For more information about Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements visit the Wildland Fire Management RD&A Website.

What Needs to be done before Incident Objectives and Requirements can be Developed?

Before creating Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements, users must draw a Planning Area for the incident. Drawing a Planning Area will determine the land area the fire might impact, and subsequently, which pre-loaded Strategic Objectives and Management Requirements will need to be addressed when you develop the incident-specific objectives and requirements.

The planning process chosen for an administrative unit, FMU Planning or Spatial Fire Planning, determines what Strategic Objectives and Management Requirements will require consideration when developing Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements. Learn more about these in the topic, Planning Processes available in WFDSS to understand the difference.

What should be Addressed in the Incident Objectives and Requirements?

When developing Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements, identify the types of values and/or resources that need to be addressed by doing the following:

• Review the Strategic Objectives and Management Requirements.
• Review the Values Inventory.
• Review the Situation Map (fuels, fire history, location of values, ground evacuation layer, etc.)

Obtain local knowledge about values or events.

Characteristics of Quality Incident Objectives

When developing Incident Objectives, adhere to the following set of characteristics and guidance:

• Does the statement provide clear Leader's Intent? For example, instead of "Protect Bald Eagle habitat", a better objective is, "Protect Bald Eagle habitat north of Rocky Ridge from high-intensity fire that kills overstory trees."
• Is the statement aligned with the Land/Resource Management Plan? For example, instead of "Contain the fire east of Black Swamp Road, south of Catfish Lake Road, and west of Wells Oaks Road, a better objective is, "Protect timber resource east of Wells Oaks Road by avoiding fire in this area, or limiting to low fire intensities if fire unavoidable."
• Are there relatively few Incident Objectives and Incident Requirements? More than five of each is typically difficult to use for informing risk tradeoffs or priorities.
• Do any of the statements conflict? For example, "Control fire at the smallest possible size." is very different from "Keep the fire east of Cold River, south of Granite Lakes, west of Johns Road, and north of Lily Lane." Firing off the whole box could be an acceptable way to meet the second objective, but may not be acceptable for meeting the first objective. Avoiding both these types of objectives is best, focusing instead on describing desired resources to be protected.
• Do the statements help the reader understand the overall sense of priority? For example, instead of "Protect infrastructure from fire" a better objective is, "Utilize point protection and/or tactical firing operations to protect the Wood Cabin, a highly valued resource listed on the National Register of Historic Places."
• Do the statements indicate What, When, Where and Why? For example, "Keep the road open <WHAT>, from the 4356/2234 junction <WHERE>, through Labor Day weekend <WHEN>, to allow public access to this highly valued recreation site <WHY>." Or, "Utilize moderate intensity fire in the Leafy Tree drainage (if protection objectives can be met) to promote aspen regeneration." Or, "Promote natural fire spread in the Aldo Leopold Wilderness as long as outlooks and predictions allow, so that fire can play a natural role."

Avoid developing Incident Objectives that are:

• Generic in nature or have vague terms that have different meaning to individuals. (e.g., keep the fire small)
• Based on unclear priorities that could jeopardize a sound risk management process that may result in needless firefighter exposure.
• In conflict with other sources of direction to include delegation of authority, the briefing package or ad hoc discussions.
• Definitive and without supportive information, such as defining a box without any explanation of why its boundaries are significant. (Why should we keep the fire north of Elliot Highway? Is there a town? Private property?)

For more specific information about writing good Incident Objectives, please read Creating Incident-Specific WFDSS Objectives (October 2015).

Guidance for Developing Quality Incident Requirements

Requirements are written in the same way, but are the "sideboards" that must be adhered to insofar is possible considering this is a wildland fire. They mostly stem from law, policy and NEPA-based guidance that should already be in WFDSS as Strategic Objectives and Management Requirements, but other examples are,

• "Avoid deploying firefighters for any ground-based operations in the Rough Creek drainage due to presence of steep terrain, heavy fuels, and no valuable assets."
• "Avoid retardant in Jenny Lake basin and within 1/4 mile of the Golden River corridor to protect ..."

"Avoid tactical firing and high (>8 feet) fire intensities in the Hamburg Meadow area to protect nesting owls."

How are Incident Objectives and Requirements Managed in a Decision?

Incident objectives and requirements may change throughout the life of an incident, warranting edits and deactivations. due to When an Incident Objective or Requirement is published in a decision for the first time, it becomes activated and is timestamped with the date the decision is published. Incident Objectives or Requirements can be reused in or excluded from future decisions. If excluded from a future decision, the Incident Objective or Requirement becomes deactivated and is not available for use in future decisions. If you want to include it in a future decision, you will have to recreate it. 

Deactivation is not the same thing as deletion. Incident Objectives and Requirements are deactivated by the WFDSS application when you exclude them from a decision, but they cannot be deleted because they were included in a previously published decision. You can only delete Incident Objectives and Requirements that have not been included in a published decision. For additional help, see the following topics:

• Editing Incident Objectives and Requirements, and
• Deleting Incident Objectives and Requirements.

Incident Objectives and Requirements are displayed in ascending order, and in the order they were entered.

To create incident objectives:

1. From the Incident list, select the incident you want to enter objectives for.
2. Click View Information. The Edit Incident page appears.
3. Select Objectives. The Objectives page appears.
4. To view the incident and strategic objectives, mark the Incident Objective and Strategic Objective check boxes, then click Apply Filter. The list of incident objectives and strategic objectives appears. No incident objectives will appear in the list if none have been created.
5. Click Create Incident Objective. The Create Incident Objective page appears.
6. Enter a description of the objective and be specific. Incident Objectives contain incident-specific content and you develop them to tier off of the broader strategic objectives.
7. Click Save. A message appears saying that the objective has been added.
8. When finished entering objectives, click Return. The Objectives list reappears with the newly added objectives at the top of the list.
9. To include the incident objectives in your decision, ensure that there is a YES beside each in the Included column. If there isn't a Yes, select the objective from the list, and then click Include. (Although you can decide which incident objectives to include in a decision, you cannot choose to include or exclude strategic objectives.)

Note: You can prioritize incident objectives by selecting an objective and clicking the Move Up or Move Down button at the bottom of the screen. To do this, make sure that the default number of rows indicated at the bottom of the page is equal to or exceeds the number of objectives and/or requirements. Otherwise, this feature is limited to only the rows displaying on the current page.

Until the decision is published, you can edit objectives, even if they have been included in the decision.

-----------
Last updated on 10/17/2019 11:08:32 AM.

To create incident requirements:

1. From the Incident list, select the incident you want to enter requirements for.
2. Click View Information. The Edit Incident page appears.
3. Select Objectives. The Objectives page appears.
4. To view the incident and management requirements, mark the Incident Requirement and Management Requirement checkboxes, then click Apply Filter. The list of incident requirements and management requirements appears. No incident requirements will appear in the list if none have been created.
5. Click Create Incident Requirement. The Create Incident Requirement page appears.
6. Enter a description of the requirement and be specific. Incident Requirements contain incident-specific content and you develop them to tier off of the broader management requirements.
7. Click Save. A message appears saying that the requirement has been added.
8. When finished entering requirements, click Return. The Requirements list reappears with the newly added requirements at the top of the list.
9. To include the incident requirements in your decision, ensure that there is a YES beside each in the Included column. If there isn't a yes, select the requirement from the list, then click Include.

   Although you can decide which incident requirements to include in a decision, you cannot choose to include or exclude management requirements.

Until the decision is published, you can edit requirements even if they have been included in the decision.

-----------
Last updated on 10/17/2019 11:08:32 AM.

In This Section Incident Objectives and Requirements To create incident objectives: To create incident requirements:

See Also About Objectives and Requirements Editing Incident Objectives and Requirements Deleting Incident Objectives and Requirements Creating Incident Obj. Shapes Associating Shapes with Incident Objectives and Requirements Editing Incident Obj. Shape Associations Viewing Incident Obj. Shape Associations

Reference Field Descriptions Glossary Resources Spatial Data Reference Landscape Data Source Reference Relative Risk Reference Organization Assessment Reference Fire Behavior Reference About the WFDSS Decision Editors