Interactive GIS for Group Decision Making: Fire Area Cost Estimator (FACE)

Author: Madalene Mary Ransom
Organization: USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

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This paper presents FACE, a new ArcView GIS application that is a proof-of-concept prototype for decision support. FACE proves that an interactive GIS tool can be built for decision makers who have no GIS skills, yet whose use of GIS would enable them to learn more about the data related to the decisions they must make. The vision of FACE is to bring more science into group decision making for groups such as watershed committees or fire safe councils. FACE is designed to be operated on the fly at public meetings.

In ArcView GIS, a person draws a polygon on a map of their area. Their area could be their community, their watershed, their county, and so on. FACE (1) saves the polygon as a theme, (2) calculates the expected cost and the upper and lower bounds of the cost estimate, (3) provides the user a description of the chosen area in terms of characteristics that are important for determining costs, and (4) provides the user a notepad into which the user can write notes about the alternative implied by the polygon.