National Park Service

Description

The overall aim of this research is to develop and apply a mathematically-based model to allocate scarce budgets from the national level to the regions and from the regions to the parks. This research advances the science of national-scale budget and resource allocation methodologies for fire management planning. Advancing the science of national-scale budgeting will have direct implications across each of the federal agencies/bureaus as well as states, NGOs, and the public. The process will be presented in a form that is operationally viable and pragmatic. This aim has the following objectives: â¿¢ Internal Consistency. Budget formulation will be consistent with budget allocation. This means that formation (park-region-national) is performed in a way that is consistent with budget allocation (national-region-park) â¿¢ Proportionate Performance: Budget formation and allocation are performed in a way that is consistent with proportional performance. Allocations by park respond to the parkâ¿¿s proportionate contribution to that parkâ¿¿s performance as measured by its return on investment (ROI) across its preparedness and fuels programs. The same principle is applied to regions. Ultimately the same principle could be applied to DOI bureaus, but this may not be addressed in the proposed research. Budgeting across the national parks administrative strata in a way that is tractable, mathematically sound, socially stable and promotes performance has been elusive for the preparedness and fuels programs. The proposed research will address this in a way that is pragmatic, defensible, repeatable and defensible. The results of the research will have the potential to serve as an informative guideline for allocations at all budget levels whether federally or non-federally managed.

Who can apply

• Public and State controlled institutions of higher education

Contact

Grants Management Specialist Kelly Adams <br/>Kelly_Adams@nps.gov<br/>
Kelly_Adams@nps.gov