1. Introduction
In many wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas, where unoccupied forests meet human development, wildland fires can threaten human life and structures [
1]. Over time, the policies of fire exclusion have resulted in changes to forest structure, contributing to more intense and severe wildfire events with the potential to disrupt the lives of people living nearby and to destroy their property. Forest fuels are structural components of forests that can combust in wildfires. Forest managers engage in activities that aim to reduce or modify the fuel available to wildfires near priority areas (such as communities), thereby reducing the severity and size of wildfires and making fire suppression efforts more effective. Forest fuel management activities in the WUI may include controlled burns, thinning tree stems, pruning branches, clearing brush and other ground fuels, chipping, or planting fire resistant species. To effectively prescribe fuel management plans, in addition to knowledge of the ecology and fire history of a stand, fire managers require information about the size, shape, type, and arrangement of fuel components [
2]. As forest fuels within broad, spatially heterogeneous areas can change rapidly (e.g., fallen branches after a wind event), they require frequent re-measurements for effective monitoring. These data can be time consuming and expensive to collect [
3]. Effective wildfire management also requires understanding, cooperation, and action by adjacent civic units (cities, municipalities, parks), private property holders, and other members of the community. For example, when municipalities apply fuels treatments to public lands, such as manually reducing the amount of fuels at a treatment site, the selected treatment(s) may not be effective unless adjacent property owners also reduce fuel loads on their land. Community members have an important role in reducing the ignitability of their residence by performing fuel reduction activities and using fire resistant landscaping building and landscaping materials [
4]. In Canada, Partners-in-Protection provides publications recommending actions that homeowners can take to reduce the likelihood of their home igniting when wildfires occur. These actions include clearing a defensible space around the house, using fire resistant landscaping, and reducing brush around the perimeter of their property [
5].
Currently, in British Columbia, fire managers complete fuel assessments and prescribe fuel modifications on public lands (such as mechanical treatments and controlled burning), seek public support for fuel modifications on public land, and advocate for personal action on private lands (such as homeowners choosing fire resistant building materials and using fire resistant landscaping). Due to the complexity of land ownership and management responsibility in the WUI, fuels treatments on public land may not be effective unless strategies are coordinated across the mosaic of land jurisdictions [
1]. Fire managers in many regions also seek to build trust through citizen-agency relations, encourage community knowledge and engagement in protection planning and mitigation activities, and enhance a sense of shared responsibility for fire hazard in the WUI [
6]. In a survey of fire managers in Alberta, Canada, communication between municipal fire managers and community residents was achieved using a wide variety of strategies, including pamphlet and newsletter distribution, newspaper or radio advertising, website notices, tradeshow booths, open houses, door-to-door meetings, and providing wildfire mitigation advice to homeowners. However, despite many fire managers expressing an interest in more two-way communication with the public, they cited funding, time, and availability of personnel as limitations to engagement and communication with people in the community [
6]. Public acceptance of fuel management actions is generally associated with knowledge of wildland fire management, and it also depends on building trust through long-term citizen-agency relations [
7].
One approach that may assist forest managers to effectively prescribe fuels treatments, and at the same time, enhance the ability of a community to take preventative actions to reduce wildfire threats is public participation in scientific research (PPSR, also commonly called citizen science). In PPSR members of the public engage in “intentional collaborations to generate new science-based knowledge” in projects that “aim explicitly to contribute to scientific research and/or monitoring” [
8]. Although the monitoring of natural resources to inform management decisions is not typically focused on purely scientific research related activities, such as formulating and testing new theories, the approaches are informed by science and the data that are collected may be used to generate new scientific knowledge. In addition, approaches developed in PPSR can readily be applied to the task of monitoring resources, (e.g., members of the public can monitor of the health and status of ecosystems). PPSR approaches can encourage conservation in residential ecosystems, where citizens help study and manage ecosystem well-being, promote positive social outcomes (such as changes in attitudes that contribute to ecosystem conservation), and feedback is provided that can be used to iteratively refine conservation and project goals [
9]. Shirk
et al. [
8] identified several potential outcomes of PPSR approaches, including scientific advances, personal growth (for those who participate), and more effective resource management in communities. PPSR has been applied in fields such as ornithology to engage volunteers in projects and the data have been used to inform resources management. For example, in ornithology, Project FeederWatch [
10] and eBird [
11] have engaged broad audiences to collect and share bird survey data by providing opportunities to learn about ornithology and sharing lists of sightings with other birder watchers. Approaches inspired by PPSR may provide opportunities to reach outcomes for individuals and communities that are desirable for wildland fire management. For example, interactive and hands-on methods of engagement have been demonstrated as effective methods to increase public knowledge of fire management activities [
12] and for building relationships between agencies and the public [
13]. Applying approaches inspired by PPSR to wildfire management could provide a mechanism for forest managers to interact with people in communities, share information to increase public understanding of wildland fire management, build agency trust by demonstrating tradeoffs in decision making in real-world situations, and foster a sense of shared responsibility.
Recent advances in personal computing and mobile communications technology have increased the number of opportunities for public participation in science and natural resources management. In particular, personal electronic devices, such as smartphones, provide capabilities for people to collect information about forest structure from the ground and human perspective. This has the ability to provide data at spatial and temporal resolutions that compliment data collected by Earth observing satellites [
14]. Smartphones are equipped with a touchscreen for viewing and entering data, sensors (including cameras to collect imagery), global positioning systems (GPS) to collect geolocation, compasses and accelerometers for measuring direction and angle, and the ability to store and transfer data over a network. An increasing proportion of the population has access to smartphones, providing the potential to collect smartphone measurements across broad geographic extents [
15]. For example, an application developed by the British Geologic Survey allows the public to document temporary geologic exposures, for example, when soil strata or underlying bedrock are temporarily exposed to the surface by excavation for construction that would otherwise be “lost to science” [
16]. Smartphone applications have been developed for professional geologists to aid in collecting notes, photos, and making field observations so that they are collected in a consistent and accessible manner [
17]. A smartphone application was developed to facilitate community-based monitoring by individuals who had been hired without previous experience measuring forest disturbances as a part of regional monitoring efforts [
18]. The Red Cross released a wildfire application for smartphones designed to provide the public with instructions for preparing for an evacuation, games to teach evacuation preparedness, wildfire warnings, wildfire locations and movement, evacuation notices, assistance in locating services or help in the event of a wildfire, and a tool to help alert family after a safe evacuation [
19]. These approaches can be extended to forest management in communities for topics such as forest fuel loading in the WUI. However, there is a need to evaluate the role of these types of programs in communities, including challenges such as volunteer participation incentives, risk, liability, and personal privacy.
In addition, there are similarities between recent PPSR efforts and environmental volunteerism (such as urban tree planting) that may be analyzed to better understand the links between volunteering, collecting data for PPSR, and the expanding role of technology. For example, the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI) has been employed to understand the motivations of volunteers in an urban tree planting project [
20]. The VFI is a model that hypothesizes six functions that are served by volunteerism, and these may be used as a tool to assess individual motivations for volunteering [
21]. The functions in the VFI are values (e.g., humanistic or altruistic), understanding (providing new learning experiences, or a chance to practice skills), social (building relationships with others), career (seeking career related benefits), protective (volunteering to escape negative feelings), and enhancement (focused on personal growth). Utilizing the VFI to analyze motivations in PPSR projects may allow researchers to understand and compare the motivations of volunteers and may also enable project designs that engage the target audience for recruitment and continued participation by volunteers.
The purpose of this exploratory study is to increase understanding of the social and management implications of a PPSR-inspired smartphone application for wildfire management. Public involvement may provide additional forest fuel loading data to forest managers both on public land (where ongoing monitoring of conditions takes place), and on private land (which forest managers may not typically have access to) and a smartphone application may provide a mechanism with which the public can gather and provide information. However, the role the application may fill needs to be evaluated for each potential use. In this study, we developed a smartphone application and examined whether it was a suitable technology for forest fuel loading data acquisition by people with a range of experiences living in a wildfire-affected community. Participants were asked to complete paper-based questionnaires before and after using the application to collect forest fuel loading data in order to help us to understand their experiences. In this manuscript we address three main points. First, we introduce the smartphone application. Second, we consider participants’ demographic characteristics and previous experiences related to wildfire and how these influenced motivations for getting involved with the project and experiences using the application to collect data, including how professionals and non-professionals approached a similar task. Third and finally, using these results as a guide, we discuss how a smartphone application inspired by a PPSR approach may fit into wildfire management in communities in the WUI.
This manuscript describes exploratory research that was conducted as a first step in understanding the challenges and possibilities of applying a smartphone application inspired by PPSR methods as a tool for measuring forest structure to inform wildfire management decisions in the WUI. The findings of this work are not meant to be conclusive, given the limited sample at a single location at a single point in time. Rather, we aim to provide insight to, or a proof of concept of, an approach which has many challenges, but which also holds considerable potential for both providing more information to forest managers and providing a way for members of communities that are vulnerable to forest fires to participate in forest and wildfire management.
4. Discussion
A major challenge in wildfire management in the WUI is establishing understanding and cooperation for fuels treatments and other preventative measures amongst the numerous stakeholders, including municipalities, parks, and private property owners [
1]. Fire managers seek communication, understanding, and incentives for individuals to take action on their properties, such as clearing brush, cutting grass, and using fire resistant landscaping at their home residence [
4]. A further challenge in the management of forest fuels is collecting timely data about forest fuel loading, as these forest structure components can rapidly change. These components are often near to the ground and under dense forest canopies, making them difficult to measure using airborne and spaceborne remote sensing platforms [
3]. Public participation in data collection may provide additional or complimentary forest fuel loading data to forest managers both on public land (where ongoing monitoring of conditions takes place), and on private land (where forest managers do not typically have access). However, the exact role of smartphone applications applied to measuring WUI forest fuels needs to be tested and examined for the range of uses that they may be suitable to provide.
In this study, people from a wildfire-affected community tested a smartphone application to collect forest fuels data in the WUI following a PPSR inspired approach. Ideally, PPSR approaches are “explicitly for non-scientists” [
24], and by extension, explicitly for non-professionals in a natural resources management context. In practice, there may be a range of professional involvement, ranging from setting project objectives, organizing data collection, and collecting data itself. For example, the North American Breeding Bird Survey enlists volunteers (some of whom are professional biologists) and provides training to facilitate data collection [
25]; these data are commonly considered PPSR data [
26]. Many other projects with voluntary participation include contributions by people with considerable expertise [
27]. In this study, participation in data collection was voluntary, and despite extensive efforts to recruit participants without professional experience related to wildfire (for whom the application was designed), half of the participants had professional backgrounds in wildfire. Although the professional involvement was not intended or expected to be as large, it represents a willingness by professionals to engage with the community about wildfire topics and provides insights into the ways that professionals and non-professionals approach similar tasks. Professional participants had higher career related motivations for their involvement, indicated higher previous knowledge and skills related to measuring forest fuels, and wanted more input in how the data are used. On many other topics, forest professionals answered questions in a similar way as non-professional participants, demonstrating many shared values with other people in the community. Our initial experience suggests that substantial professional involvement may be beneficial or necessary in a wildfire PPSR project to address and mitigate some of the inherent risks related to wildfire management and also as a public outreach opportunity.
Motivation to volunteer is critical to the success of PPSR projects and also for public outreach projects for wildfire protection. The number of participants in this study was lower than expected, especially considering the generally positive reception of the research by the community and local media coverage that occurred during the recruiting campaign. One factor was that the research team was located in a different city than the field site, restricting the number of scheduled visits. If the research team were closer to the study site, several more potential participants’ schedules could have been accommodated. In other efforts, such as volunteer mapping of streets, a small number of volunteers have been able to thoroughly map areas and provide very high quality data, especially if those volunteers are motivated to accurately represent an area, and the products developed from the volunteered data are distributed to a much broader audience [
28]. Despite the small sample size in the present project, the number of participants was realistic for a community-mapping project. In future research, sharing the volunteered data over the internet and inviting participation in other ways, such as viewing or analyzing the collected data, could attract a potentially larger group of people.
Non-professional respondents’ awareness of other existing public outreach wildfire programs (such as Partners-in-Protection) was surprisingly low, considering that they are the target audience of the programs. In contrast to many other PPSR projects that are targeted to hobbies (such as birdwatching or astronomy), this study dealt with preparatory actions to avoid a hazard. As such, there are differences in the implementation from an organizational and participant perspective. Other volunteer projects have addressed risk-related issues with considerable recruitment of volunteers, however most have dealt with responses to disaster situations and not prevention [
19,
29]. Likewise, for wildfire hazard reduction, salience for wildfire issues is highest soon after the occurrence of a wildfire [
6]. Smartphone applications and public participation data collection projects may serve a different role in wildland fire management. For example, long-term interactions are also important for positive citizen-agency relationship building [
7]. Similar to how the experiment in the present study was structured, in a PPSR inspired project, community foresters may interact with participants on an ongoing basis in person, at workshops, and through electronic communications thus providing an environment to build citizen-agency relationships, and potentially increase knowledge over a longer time period.
The retention of citizen volunteers is another factor that is critical to the success of PPSR projects. Some PPSR projects have utilized game elements and social network services in an effort to increase motivation and engagement for collecting data (e.g., Han
et al. [
30]). Volunteers in other PPSR projects have indicated that game elements and electronic communication tools that provided social interaction and recognition of achievements were important for the ongoing involvement of volunteers in projects, but were not a factor in recruitment [
31]. In addition, factors related to understanding were the most frequently reported motivations in the Galaxy Zoo project, an astronomy project where volunteers classified the shape of galaxies in images acquired by the Hubble telescope, with a strong following of an estimated 20,000 volunteers (sample of 20 volunteers) [
32]. Our exploratory research suggests that the factors identified after using the application (understanding, social, and values) could be further developed to retain volunteers in PPSR projects related to wildfire. Electronic communication tools can be easily incorporated into the application to support the retention of volunteers through social incentives, and in addition provide opportunities for interactive communication with fire managers.
Previous research linked perceived risk and threat assessment with homeowners taking wildfire mitigation action [
33]. Therefore, increased perceived risk and improved threat assessment are desirable outcomes for this project. The changes observed in the repeated questions related to awareness of forest fuel hazards, knowledge about forest fuels, and planned behaviors for forest fuels hazard reduction after using the application to collect forest fuels data were small in magnitude. These changes were small, likely in part because most of the participants had already agreed or strongly agreed with most of the statements prior to using the application to collect forest fuels data, leaving little room for improvement and many of the participants were already aware of fire hazards and motivated to take action as indicated through volunteering for the project. In addition, the participants used the application for a short amount of time and did not have the opportunity to use the application more than once. Price and Lee [
34] found an increase in scientific literacy along with a negative change in personal evaluations of knowledge over a six-month astronomy project, which they attributed to participants gaining a greater appreciation for what they had yet to learn. Nonetheless, our exploratory findings indicate that there is promise to use PPSR as a tool with the potential for positive outcomes for the participants and for communities where wildfires occur.
While using the application, some of the participants raised considerations that need to be addressed before the application could be released to the public. First, operational uses and restrictions would need to be defined, for example, if different procedures are required to use the application on public lands with data sharing, or if usage on private lands would necessitate data being held in confidence. The second consideration was risk or liability associated with wildfire. For example, could the project organizers be held liable for damages if volunteered assessments lead to the decision not to treat an area and a wildfire occurred? Alternatively, if the assessments indicated that a treatment should be performed but were not financially possible, would the responsible person or organization be held liable for damage caused by the fire? Careful legal consultation would be needed in any region where the application was released to the public. Third, a concern was raised about adversarial or malicious measurements. For example, a participant cited an example of one resident illegally cutting trees to improve his view under the guise of fuel reduction; however, any indication of this type of behavior was not observed in this study. The images collected by the application would provide evidence that could be reviewed against any inflated claims, and observations from the same area conducted by different, independent observers could provide further corroborating evidence. In the study region, municipal bylaws restrict the removal of large trees without permitting. Finally, a concern was raised about rapidly distributing data without professional interpretation, leading to unreasonable public pressure on community foresters to perform treatments that are beyond operating budgets or do not match priorities. In the an ideal case, PPSR inspired projects may provide a mechanism to share information about forest management decisions and build participant knowledge, including tradeoffs, costs, and compromises in making decisions, which are activities that are associated with increased support and trust for agencies making forest management decisions [
12]. All forest professionals indicated that they would like to be consulted about how the data were used, which is reasonable given their expertise, in prescribing treatments to improve safety and maintain forest health. It is unknown whether moderation or filtering of the data by professionals would affect the motivation of participants and how this would affect the perception of the project and agencies involved in the project. In addition, if participants feel that agencies do not recognize or use information that they receive from interactions with the public, it may erode trust in the agency [
35], which is a potential risk for agencies engaging in PPSR inspired wildland fire projects. In future work, systems will be needed to store and analyze the data, and the previously mentioned expectations of fairness of use of the data may provide guidance in developing approaches for data stewardship [
36].
4.1. Limitations of Study
This was an exploratory study, conducted under controlled conditions in a limited area and over a short time period. Conducting the study with more participants, over a broader area, and over a longer time period would provide more robust information. Statistical methods were used only to explore the data, and larger sample sizes and more controlled experiments would be needed to make inferences about larger populations. This study was not intended as an inferential study, but a proof of concept of a new application. More work is needed to assess if this smartphone application would see market success and uptake.
5. Conclusions
Forest fuels treatment in the WUI is important to reduce the threat of wildfire to communities. This exploratory study applied a PPSR approach to forest fuels treatment in the WUI using a smartphone application to collect forest structural data related to forest fuel loading. This study applied PPSR approaches to wildfire management with the intent of communities and volunteers experiencing positive outcomes while building a more extensive dataset of fuel loading data. Through answers to questionnaires, we evaluated the relationship of demographics and experiences of participants to their awareness, knowledge, and planned behaviors related to wildfire and considered how these might be addressed in a technology-driven PPSR project. In addition, several logistical considerations were identified that should be addressed before this approach is implemented outside of an experimental setting.
Measuring forest fuels data is usually in the domain of forest professionals. Our approach differs in that we invited non-professionals to engage in this activity using a smartphone application to facilitate data collection. Because wildfire threatens large populations, the outcomes of PPSR-based approaches have the potential to benefit large numbers of people and provide a mechanism for community members to take positive preventative action. Approaches inspired by PPSR are another outreach tool available to forest managers with the potential for positive outcomes in WUI communities. However, some of the differing answers between professionals and non-professionals indicate a need for caution in utilizing these new approaches. Initially, forest managers may wish to engage more limited levels of participation, for example, rather than distributing the application widely to the general public, the application could be given to smaller groups who have received training. Issues such as legal liability associated with the use of data collected using this application would also require ongoing attention and refinement over time.
In future work, this approach could be released for use with a greater number of people and throughout a broader area. The approach can be expanded to include more possibilities offered by the technology, including extensive feedback (such as maps of the data collected), social connectedness, and implementation for broader objectives including conservation. This project focused on the data collection aspect of a PPSR inspired project, so future work may test other types of participation in wildland fire management, for example, setting study objectives, analyzing data, weighing costs and benefits in decision making, and distributing the results to a broader audience.