Planning Models and GIS: CommunityViz

**A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**March 18, 2004**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The Bureau of Land Management satellite network presents live
from the national training center in Phoenix, Arizona, the BLM NEPA
forum, planning models and GIS. The second in a series of broadcasts
highlighting important topics on planning and NEPA in the BLM. Today\'s
topic, planning models and GIS, with a special look at the CommunityViz
software program. And now, your host for today\'s program, Cathy
Humphrey.\
\
Cathy: Good morning and welcome to today\'s show on planning models and
GIS. As with all of our NEPA/Planning Forums, our goals are to give you
an update on what\'s knew with BLM, what\'s NEPA or planning in the BLM,
take your questions and show you the latest tools that might be useful
to you working on the ground. Before we go on, I\'d like to take a
moment to introduce our panel of experts with us today. First we have
Cynthia Moses-Nedd, BLM\'s liaison to the National Association of
Counties or NACO and she\'s based out of the Washington office. Good
morning, Cynthia.\
\
Cynthia: Good morning, I\'m happy to be here.\
\
Cathy: Next we have Heather O\'Hanlon. She\'s from the BLM\'s Moab
district office. Welcome, Heather.\
\
Heather: It\'s great to be here.\
\
Cathy: And from the BLM Moab office is Doug WIGHT, a GIS coordinator.
Hi, Doug.\
\
Doug: Good morning.\
\
Cathy: And lastly Lex Ivy. A consult at that particular time. Thanks for
coming down, Lex.\
\
Lex: Thanks, Cathy, it\'s good to be here.\
\
I\'d like to mention that during this broadcast, we\'re going to take
your questions using the push-to-talk system. We\'re going to let you
know when we have the system on and when asking a question, just push
the button on the microphone, give us your name and location first and
we\'ll release a button and call on you. If more than one person speaks
at a time, I\'ll use the time out sign and I\'ll call on the first
person I heard. Stay a foot and a half from the MIC when speaking, about
an arm\'s length and we\'ll hear from you later in the show. Please hold
your questions until the question and answer segment. We promise to get
as many of your questions as time allows. If you have a problem with
your push-to-talk system, call in your questions toll free at
1-877-862-5346. Or you can fax us a question any time at 602-906-5701.
We\'ll also going to have a drawing for some lucky BLM office. By
calling 602-906-5550, you can enter our drawing to win this print titled
\"funky cow\" by Tucson artist Diana Madaras. This colorful 17 by 19
inch picture will definitely class up your office. If you are look tired
of looking at your same old land status maps on the wall, call to try to
win this funky cow print. You can all once to enter the drawing, and
then every time you chime in with a question during the push to talk
segment that\'s later in the program, we\'ll enter your office again.
And we\'re going to have the drawing at the end of our show. But if the
phone is busy when you call in, you\'ll get if you are funky cow voice
mail. If so, leave the name of your office and we\'ll enter you in our
contest. We can now get on with the broadcast.\
\
As we go through this program you\'ll find that GIS planning cools can
apply to finer scaled projects and broader planning. Planning faces many
challenges, including the need to create and maintain credible data, to
involve the public throughout the NEPA and planning processes and also
to make good defensible divisions. You know, this is more difficult when
you factor in the limited time, money, people, and Internet access,
which are part of our reality these days. So, now we have some comments
about using GIS to meet some of these challenges that I just talked
about and Ed Shepard, who is BLM\'s assistant director for renewable
resources and planning in Washington will give you these comments.
Here\'s what Ed had to say.\
\
It helps not only the manager make a better decision, it also helps the
public give us better input. You can see some of the consequences of
this alternative over another alternative. With the geo-spatial, we have
\-- and the modeling tools that go into them, we get a better idea on
the ground what some of these things might look like in the \-- and the
effects. As I said, it not only helps the manager, it helps the public
give us some better input into our plans.\
\
Cathy: Thanks, Ed, for taking time to share your thoughts with us. Now
we\'ll take a closer look at one of the GIS tools and it\'s called
CommunityViz. This software is a very powerful resource \-- visual
resource that you can use when working with spatial data. It can help us
to engage the public in our own staff when developing and analyzing land
management alternatives. You know, the software actually lets us
visualize the data in many new and improved ways. First let\'s find out
what CommunityViz is all about.\
\
Doug: I\'m Doug walker, managing director for CommunityViz. CommunityViz
is a program of the O Oregon family foundation. Our foundation is a
nonprofit, dedicating to making people make better decisions about their
communities and the land. With that mission in mine, CommunityViz
software was first created. Now, although our initial applications were
specifically on community planning, it quickly became clear that this
software was a very powerful tool for resource management and land use
decisions in general. Based on GIS technology. As you know, GIS is a
powerful tool for helping people understand the world as it is. What
we\'ve tried to do is add an additional dimension to that which is
helping people understand the world as it may be. We try to give people
a way to understand and explore alternatives, to visualize choices they
may be making about how to use the land or how to build their community,
quantify impacts of their decisions. This has turned out to be a very
effective tool for resource management, and we\'re delighted to see that
BLM is having success with this tool, because after all, making good
decisions about land is what CommunityViz software is about and what the
family foundation is all about. We wish you success.\
\
Cathy: As we\'ve just seen, planning tools like CommunityViz seem to be
a good match for the type of planning activities that we in the BLM are
individual with. Before we get into the nitty-gritty of how it works
we\'d like to go to Cynthia who routinely works with county governments
on a broad range of issues including planning. Cynthia, what do you see
as the benefits to counties when tools like CommunityViz are used.\
\
They can provide a tremendous opportunity for BLM as well as county
governments. It enables managers to view \-- we believe this geo-spatial
tool can benefit local communities by illustrating socio-economic
benefits, as well as models of possible impacts from our various land
use decisions. As county seek to address issues of growth and preserving
open space and achieving balance within their local communities, GIS
tools like CommunityViz can provide an excellent means to literally see
the big picture.\
\
Cathy: Thanks, Cynthia. That was very helpful. Now, what we\'re going to
do is Lex is going to show us some real-world applications of this GIS
decision support software. Lex?\
\
Lex: Thanks, Cathy. CommunityViz has been used by hundreds of people on
a huge variety of planning projects in natural resource management. For
BLM projects, there are a number of areas where GIS decision support
software can be of help in the planning process. These include
development of alternatives, visual I\'dation of those alternatives, the
application of scientific data in modeling, analyzing alternatives, and
getting high levels of community involvement and public participation.
Taken together, this results in a more efficient planning process that
yields better, more defensible divisions. My first example is a short
case study from Gunnison, Colorado. This footage from a recent public
meeting shows one of the methods we used in gathering public input for a
CommunityViz model. So let\'s go to Gunnison county.\
\
Roughly two years ago, the \-- which requires counties to meet certain
thresholds and do comprehensive land use planning. Gunnison county meets
that threshold. We began this process about a year and a half ago and
the goal is to develop a comprehensive land use plan for Gunnison
county.\
\
There is a huge quantity of public lands in Gunnison county. Those lands
are one of the reasons people move here. They are a huge amenity for
hunting, hiking, skiing and all of the activities that the people do. So
they are a big economic generator. And that creates a demand for housing
and commercial businesses that have to be cited on the private \-- SITED
on the public lands.

We have the distribution of land use types onto the landscape. The
quantity of land uses is a reflection of the growth rate and projection
forward into the future in terms of how many houses and jobs are
required at some point in the future.\
\
What we\'re doing, here\'s 2000, here\'s 2025. We\'re dealing with this
stuff up here, how many new people are going to be coming here, and what
makes sense in terms of where we want to encourage that development to
happen. And then what kinds of development are things that your various
groups will talk about. We\'re going to have almost 31,000 people living
here if it continues to grow as it has in the past. You can argue, it\'s
going to be slow or it\'s going to be faster. It really doesn\'t make
any difference. We have got 25 years but if it takes 45 your 08 years,
we need to accommodate people. Don\'t get hung up on that number per
se.\
\
I think we demonstrated the challenge given the public land we have
placing all of the units that we\'re going to have to look for in the
next 10 years, 20 years. Just the fact that they got together in a room,
didn\'t shout, we have one purpose \-- so from a staff perspective, we
can get on with life. We can get the draft out, get out there in the
public and communicate, and actually make it happen.\
\
I think CommunityViz has been very helpful to us, because a lot of
people say we have desires about where goals should occur, where housing
should be built, but people can\'t visualize it without a tool like
CommunityViz.\
\
Lex: As you can see, Gunnison, we were very successful in obtaining
meaningful public input. We\'ve also completed projects addressing a
variety of environmental, social and economic planning issues. Here are
some examples that are relevant to BLM\'s planning activities. The first
project illustrates how the nature conservancy and the U.S. Fish &
Wildlife service used our software to evaluate economic development and
habitat restoration along the Illinois river valley. These organizations
plan to reconnect the emone preserve floodplain with the Illinois river.
The goal of the project is to return the landscape to its natural
condition as well as boosting tourism in adjacent counties that are
economically depressed. The project also studied several land-use
scenarios that would help increase tourism. This included exploring the
possibility of a lodge, various campsite arrangements, and the allowance
of recreational activities that were in concert with area preservation.
Scenario 360 estimated the number of visitors to the area.

The amounts of accommodations needed throughout the year, the
development costs to the companies \-- to the counties, as well as the
social and fiscal implications. This next project addresses fire risk
management. The goal of the Firewise Program is to help people in fire
prone areas understand wildfire hazards near their homes. Using scenario
360, planners were able to assess fire risk for individual homes as well
as communities as a whole. As you can see here, the larger the red dot,
the higher the fire risk is for that particular home. Scenario 360
provides more than a static view of wildfire risk for the community. For
example, fire mitigation treatments such as tree clearing or prescribed
burns can be analyzed in real-time to show the effectiveness of various
treatment options. These results can also be communicated using 3D
visualization to show homeowners their fire risk in the context of their
own backyard. This next example shows how the trust for public lands or
TPL, is using CommunityViz software to determine the best locations for
parks in underserved urban areas. In Los Angeles, the majority of parks
are located near the city edge and in areas with low population
densities. TPL has embarked on this project to remedy the situation by
acquiring land within the city\'s center. TPL used five criteria to
guide its site selection process. One was a high percentage of children.
Number two, a high percentage of minorities. Number three, a high
percentage of low income residents. Number four, high population
densities, and five, low park densities. TPL planners used CommunityViz
to altar maps by weighting and rating techniques and changing the
importance of individual criteria.

This allowed them to identify neighborhoods that were good candidates
for new parks. Now, here\'s an example where the universal soil loss
equation was incorporated into scenario 360 to quantify soil loss. The
model evaluates GIS layers, such as slope composition, soil, vegetation
coverage and project duration to calculate soil loss. The blue polygon
on the screen representation a construction area. As you can see, when
it\'s moved to a new location, the soil loss is updated in real-time.
The next example is a BLM RMP project performed in the Lakeview District
in Oregon. The goal of the RMP was to balance recreation use with the
protection of areas of critical environmental concern, cultural
resources, and wilderness study areas.

The CommunityViz model helped BLM to analyze and quantify impacts of
several land-use alternatives. Four alternatives were evaluated with
indicators related to either commodity production or resource
preservation. The indicators reflected issues common to many BLM
resource management planning efforts. , including revenues from
recreation and grazing, preservation of ACEC, OHV access and fire risk
management. The model facilities in real time interactive
decision-making environment where people could see which land use
alternative best served their interests. Now let\'s hear what Steve
Ellis has to say about using GIS in the development of an RMP.\
\
GIS was extremely helpful in development of the RMP. We used it from the
very beginning in the analysis of the management situation where we went
out and looked at the various water sheds and tried to see the resources
that we had and to map these things out. So we were able to take these
maps, you know, resource condition, the staff was able to analyze them.
We were able to use them at public scoping meetings. Once we got into
preparation of the draft RMP, the maps that we used were very handy and
showing \-- in showing alternatives, in looking at various resources to
see where conflicts were. Myself being a very visual person, I found
them very helpful. Also, we received a lot of positive feedback from the
public, from elected officials, such as county commissioners that really
enjoyed us lugging those maps in so they could see the conflicts that we
had.\
\
Lex: So there were a number of advantages and benefits for the BLM
office when using CommunityViz for their planning process, especially
when addressing quantitative impacts. CommunityViz offers rich 3D
capabilities. You can create virtual models of your project\'s
alternatives. You can create photo realistic 3D scenes and explore them
in real time. These visualization provide another opportunity to improve
the decision-making process by allowing people to understand the visual
implications of their land use decisions. The software allows you to
share scenes with others who don\'t have the software, much like an
acrobat reader allows you to read a .pdf document. In addition you can
create AVI movie files of your 3D scenes. Now you can really see your
data. Now I\'m going to show you a 3D animation developed for the
National Park Service. The park service used CommunityViz at Chickasaw
national recreation area for its general management plan. The tool was
used to generate public input, develop, illustrate different planning
options, and understand the impacts of proposed alternatives. This
simple animation was used to illustrate the proposed management
strategies for one of these alternatives. 3D scenes like this helped the
public understand the current state of its park, its resources, and its
relationship with surrounding lands.

This tool generated excitement about the development of their general
management plan. The next visualization was developed for American
rivers an advocacy group dedicated to the health and restoration of
America\'s rivers. CommunityViz modeled the visual effects for the
removal of two dams on the snake river. American rivers sought to
portray the restored riverbed channels and rapids and to illustrate
revegetation of the area over time. We first used digital photos and
aerial images to create a visualization of current conditions. Then
using historic photos, we created images to illustrate the conditions
that could result if these dams were we moved. The movies show the
mudflats that would initially be exposed after the dam removal as well
as the revegetation of the entire area. This last example was created
for the redevelopment of an industrial site located in the city of
Littleton, located south of Denver, Colorado. The city used this
visualization to show the public what the proposed housing and
commercial development would look like. Visualizations were created
showing the site from adjacent roadways. Architectural drawings, aerial
photographs, and site plans were used to create this animation.

Now that we\'ve covered some applications, I\'d like to review what
makes CommunityViz a decision-support tool. Scenario 360 GIS-based
decision support software for land use planning and resource management.
It adds interactive analysis tools and decision-making capabilities.
Scenario 360 provides an open modeling environment that can be used for
a wide variety of resource management issues. The formula wizard and the
field calculator are very user friendly. Scenario 360 works with spatial
data the way EXCEL works with numbers. This system differs from regular
GIS in that as you edit tables or shape files or change the assumptions
in the model, the formulas recalculate in real time. The software helps
you analyze, understand, and communicate land use alternatives and their
respective impacts. Quantitative social, environmental and economic
impacts can be measured and communicated. A selection of easy to
understand charts communicates complex issues. As you manipulate data
and attributes, the system automatically updates the charts in real
time. Users and stakeholders can ask \"what if\" questions and then play
out \"if then\" scenarios quickly and effectively. This allows the
models to be transparent and easily understood by all stakeholders.
Alternatives and impacts can be viewed side by side and any combination
of charts, maps and images can be tiled for quick comparison.

Scenario 360 includes a range of reporting and presentation features to
share information. This includes professional looking HTML reports that
can be generated at the touch of a button. Scenario 360 has full 3D real
time capabilities that can create photo realistic 3D scenes that are
interactive from two dimensional map data. You can create fly-through
movies and share interactive 3D scenes with a standalone viewer.\
\
Cathy: Thanks, Lex, for that description of community viz. I liked the
3D visual addition and the fact that you can look at the social and
economic impacts. That was really good, thanks. Now we\'re going to have
a few comments by BLM\'s Deputy Director Fran Cherry and Ann Aldridge
who is BLM\'s southeastern states Associate State Director.\
\
The bureau was already starting to invest time and effort into GIS
efforts and we had several attempts at trying to make things work.
We\'ve come to realize over the years, that the quality of our documents
only improve with each and every new invasion that comes along in the
Reno GIS satellite technology, infrared mapping, all of those tools add
to the quality of our data and our decision-making process. As time goes
on, the changes will come at an ever faster pace. We need to embrace all
of that technology because it makes decisions better and the land
better. We would like to urge all managers and all employees to pay
careful attention to these tools. The need for good information in a
fast and timely manner is more necessary than we\'ve ever had in the
past. We simply can\'t cope with the demands placed on the bureau these
days without the utilization of these new and improved tools, and we
need all levels of BLM to be better able to respond to the new
technology that\'s out there and available for us to use if that\
\
Ann: I think there is a number of things happening in the GIS world that
I think have gotten a lot of bureau folks excited. In conjunction with
that, there is modeling software and the one that I have personally
familiar with is the software that\'s called CommunityViz that allows us
to take our data and project the future. What if the dam up stream
breaks? What\'s it going to cause? It can help us identify not only the
risk management risks we may have on the public lands, but also help us
to look at new ways of providing uses for the use and enjoyment of the
public lands in a way we haven\'t been able to visualize in the past. So
I would urge everybody to take a look at this type of software, this
modeling software that\'s been used in other areas, but I think this is
the first time I\'ve seen it brought into the planning world in a way
that really helps us resolve some of the problems we\'ve always had, not
only internally but in visioning what\'s going to be best for the land
externally.\
\
Using the latest technology and tools to improve how we\'re doing
planning and to help us learn a little bit more about how CommunityViz
lets us \-- about community viz, we\'re going to look at an actual BLM
case study from Utah. This case study, it\'s an in-depth look at how
this software was used on the Ray Mesa wild lands urban interface
project in the Moab field office. Doug and Heather are going to give us
some background about the project. Heather, could you give us some
insight into the mitigation issues surrounding Moab?

Heather: Thanks, Cathy. Past fire management and grazing practices have
contributed to highly flammable deck can\'t fuels on the land of the
southeastern Utah. The build-up of fuels is further exacerbated by both
drought and increasing number of people moving from urban to rural
settings which intensifies fire hazard in the area where fuels surround
homes. With the added complications of Ips beetle, many landscapes are
in need of treatment. Several parcels of public land have been
identified as wildland urban interface areas in need of immediate
management action to improve and protect public health and safety. Ray
Mesa is just one of those areas. The community of Ray Mesa borders BLM
lands and is routinely threatened by dry lightning storms during monsoon
season from mid-june through eight august. There have been many fires in
recent history that threat end homes and public land resources. Private
property and the safety of homeowners would be jeopardized in the event
of another fire, as some of the homes have been constructed of highly
flammable materials, and are currently surrounded by hazardous fuels. In
addition, the homes are situated in an area that is currently defensible
only at the risk of firefighter safety. Over the past 30 years, pinion
and juniper trees have multiplied and become the dominant species in the
Ray Mesa area. These trees could combined with old growth Ponderosa are
highly flammable, so the Ray Mesa project was identified as a
wildland-urban interface high risk priority.\
\
Cathy: You know that seems to be a common problem across the west. These
highly flammable areas near houses. So I was wondering since you
determined that Ray Mesa is a high risk priority, what are some of the
things you are doing to educate the public on this?\
\
Heather: The BLM and Utah state division of forestry, fire and state
land are coordinating to help the community by a community fire plan.
This helps the community identify the problems and take ownership
concerning the threat of wildfire.\
\
Cathy: Okay, thanks, Heather. Now, Doug, how would you like to tell us
how you have used CommunityViz to address these high risk areas?\
\
Doug: Okay, we use GIS in conjunction with the CommunityViz suite of
tools in a variety of ways. First we address the issues of fuel
reduction and firefighter safety in regards to the defensible space.
Next, existing GIS data was used to identify constraints like slope
limitation that is dictate treatment options. Also spatial data was
linked to existing models to assess effectiveness of the treatment
planned. In other words, linking assumptions to the spatial data. We
then used GIS to develop and assess different alternatives in a dynamic
environment. So we \-- so if we changed our spatial extent, assumptions
or constraints, the outcomes are shown in real time. Utilizing
visualization with GIS data provided us with the ability to see the
landscape before and after treatment. And finally, documentation in the
form of maps and charts was incorporated into the EA. This helped to
show all of the possible assumptions and outcomes, Cathy, in a nutshell,
that\'s how we used GIS and CommunityViz.

Cathy: That sounds great. If it was up to me, we would be in trouble. It
appears that this project was pretty small scale. How would you \-- how
would this work for a larger project area?\
\
Doug: The model is already in place. All you have to do is add
constraints, change your assumptions for that particular geography. This
is pretty simple when we\'re work within the CommunityViz software.\
\
Cathy: Thanks, Doug. You make it sound pretty simple. So now Lex is
going to expand on the environmental assessment process for the Ray Mesa
project using CommunityViz.\
\
Lex: Thanks, Cathy. Now we\'re going to look at how CommunityViz works
with the NEPA process. It can assist with an environmental assessment in
these key areas and more. Identifying issues and goals, formulating
alternatives, comparing those alternatives, selecting the preferred
alternatives, and providing documentation for the public record, and
finally, in the implementation and monitoring faces. Now let\'s look at
the EA that was part of the Ray Mesa project. Let me go ahead and fly
into Ray Mesa using CommunityViz\'s site builder 3D software. This is a
real-time 3D model showing the location of Ray Mesa in southeast Utah.
We\'re flying over canyon country. Now we\'re starting to fly towards
the LaSalle mountains in the background. We\'re transitioning from the
desert into the pinion-juniper woodland situation. As we get closer to
the site, you can see some of those decadent fuels that Heather was
talking about, and the Ponderosa pine resources that are important to
the area.

Now we\'ll go to a 2D representation of that area and as you can see, on
the screen, we\'ve got the yellow boundary area, which delineates the
Ray Mesa property. That\'s a 355 acre parcel of land located in pinion
and juniper woodlands, with Ponderosa pines interspersed throughout.
These are old growth stands of Ponderosa pines. Here we\'ve got some
open areas, and these Mosaic areas are typical of a 25-year fire cycle.
As as you can see with these red triangles that represent houses, this
is a classic wildland urban interface area, and these decadent fuels
pose a threat to these houses as well as these other cultural resources.
So these issues really become the driving force behind the EA which
seeks out ways to find mitigations for these wildfire hazards. So in
order to have the tool help us identify areas that need treatments or
are suitable for fire treatments, we want to set up some criteria. I\'ll
show you power point slides of these criteria as they form GIS
coverages. These criteria include suitability or proximity to the roads.
Existing roads are in brown. And the blue areas delineate areas close to
roads, whereas the red areas show areas far from the roads. Look at this
box in the lower left-hand corner.

This is how the user can define the distance that defines proximity. You
can set it from 100 to 2000 feet. Likewise, with the proximity to the
existing buildings, we see areas close to the buildings while the red
areas are far away. So there is an Anasazi ruin located here. We can
define the proximity. It\'s a sense sieve resource. You can clear the
fuels accordingly. Here\'s some Ponderosa pines. Once again, showing the
proximity to those, and here\'s high fuel loading areas, mostly in
pinion, June peer and gamble oak areas. When we generate those criteria
together, we can dynamically change the definitions of proximity and get
an immediate update on our map. So areas in this map that are red are
high \-- highly suitable for fire treatment. But when we make those
changes it becomes most of the upper portion of this property, extends
down here, surrounds our cultural resource site and extends close to
this road that goes down the site of the property. This is using
criteria to help guide the decision-making process. Now, I\'ll go back
to the software to show another way that we can use data to help us
understand where we should start out with our formulation of different
alternatives. These are called indicators. Indicators are usually
nonspatial measures of our goals and objectives. Are we meeting our
goals and objectives? We use indicators to measure that. Indicators
include, reduction of fuel loading. Enhancement of grass and scrubland
native to the area. The cost of the treatments, as well as the
socio-economic effects. So now that we have two ways of measuring, one
is suitability, and one using indicators, we can begin to formulate our
alternatives. So now I\'m going to go ahead and create an alternative
using CommunityViz. It\'s really simple. You just start out by
delineating the fire treatment plan. As we saw from our suitability,
this would be a good place to start, up in the northern part here,
because we want to shade these houses to the north with a fuel break. So
we want to go with a 300-foot fuel break along this road. We draw the
polygon. It prompts us for what type of treatment we want to make it.

Let\'s create a mechanical and manual thinning treatment. We hit
\"okay.\" Automatically it Cascades through a bunch of calculations,
using assumptions and pop plates those indicator charts, giving us an
idea of what the fuel in tons per acre is before the treatment, as well
as after the treatment. We can look at that in tons or in tons per acre.
Now, to show you a dynamic of this model, we can take this treatment and
move it to another area, perhaps it has more fuels. We immediately get
an update in the fuels in tons, but there are fuels per acres stay the
same, because the size stays the same. Another way we can view live
impact analysis on our alternatives is by looking at our assumptions. In
fact going to the model. Now with the treatment, you want to be able to
specify the desired tree spacing for the treatment. In this case, it\'s
35 feet between each tree. So we can easily change that to 50 or 100,
and automatically get an update in our chart that reflects how the fuel
loading is going to be after the treatment. So we can go up and down
below that threshhold, all the way up to our maximum. The user can
specify that. Keep in mind that this impact analysis can be done for a
whole host of indicators that I talked about earlier, socio-economic
ones, et cetera.

Now that we\'ve done impact analysis on the formulation of different
alternatives, we can now compare alternatives. Scenario 36 0 allows you
to do comparison between many different alternatives as the screen shows
you the alternatives we were looking at where native grasslands before
and after treatments. On the top, we have phase 1 and on the bottom
phase 2. So you can compare different alternatives, phases and the like.
We can also do visual impacts with the software. On the top, you see the
base scenario with no action or no action alternative. And on the
bottom, we see phase 2, and on the left-hand column shows us a two
dimensional and right is three dimensions. Visual impacts are very key
in complementing quantitative impact. Now in developing a preferred
alternative, after comparing them, you can develop a preferred
alternative. In this case of Ray Mesa, it was decided that the entire
property needed to be dealt with. But they didn\'t want to do it all at
once, so we phased it out. In phase 1, that was that critical area that
buffers the houses, protects these houses in the north by doing a
300-foot shaded fuel break here. We can see the fuels that were
addressed here in the indicator charts. Phase 2 dealt with the remainder
of the property on areas that had less than 30% slopes. And the reason
for that was, with the bull hog, the mechanical chipper and shredder you
can\'t take that on steep slopes without doing a lot of damage to the
soils. So phase 3, the steep slopes were all done manually with chain
saws. The end product was a completely mitigated property to protect the
resources that were the basis for our criteria. So now we have a
preferred alternative. Now we have a document. And what better way to
show our rationale for our decisions than to have a report that can go
to the document. This offers HTML reporting capabilities. They are
accessible to the public because they can go on the web site. They show
all of the inputs, all of the assumptions, all of the outputs, both in
terms of visual impacts, as well as quantitative impacts, it\'s got all
of our charts, indicator charts, all of our assumptions, and all of the
outputs of the model. This is defensible data that can become part of
your administrative record. Now we can come back to our hypothetical
scenario. We\'ve passed the plan, it\'s a document now. Now we can go
into the implementation phase. Let\'s go ahead and start our
implementation. You can track your progress on the ground. We\'ve got
this part cleared out now.

Let\'s see how we\'re doing in terms of our goals and objectives for
fuel, for fuel monitoring. If we don\'t achieve our goals, we can then
reevaluate our action plans and that becomes adaptive management. We can
also challenge our assumptions, again, for those of you who are familiar
with U.S. Forest Service fuel model tables, you can see that the actual
parameters driving this fuel model are actually fuel models from the
U.S. Forest Service. Those are available for data sets \-- those data
sets are available for all kinds of forest cover types all over the
nation and can easily be implemented into this model, demonstrating the
model\'s transportability. The ability to challenge your assumptions and
understand how they integrate into the model shows that the model is
transparent and that increases creditability from the public and also
in-house when you are creating these models. So, Cathy, as you can see
from this Ray Mesa case study, CommunityViz bridges planning models and
GIS to assist with the NEPA planning process. Back to you, Cathy.\
\
Cathy: Wow, Lex, that was pretty cool. So you can actually use
CommunityViz to develop alternatives and to compare impacts and select
the preferred alternative and implement and monitor the activities?\
\
Lex: That\'s correct. You can do all of the steps and visualize it in 3D
as well.\
\
Cathy: You can. I was just going to \-- do you have another 3D model you
can look at?\
\
Lex: Let\'s look at the faces of the model. \-- the phases of the model.
We can do that by selecting a predefined pathway. Once again, this is
site builder 3D. As we fly around the project site, we can turn on and
off different phases of the model. So for phase 2 that\'s going to
affect most of the site. So you see a huge change there from the
existing conditions, to when the whole property has been dedicated.
Likewise, we can just look at phase 3 which addresses the steep slopes
in the foreground, turning those on and off shows us existing
conditions, before, and after the treatments. As you can see, we
preserved all of the Ponderosa pines, and we have reduced the fuels
around those. And we\'ve got more of the natural mosaic pattern that you
see surrounding the site in the foreground here. This is a natural
existing meadow. This is going to fit in with that. So there you have
it. There is all of the phases, rendered in 3D, so you can see visual
impacts. Thanks.\
\
Cathy: Pretty cool. That looks like where I grew up actually. I like it.
So Doug, do you have anything to add to this?\
\
Doug: Lex has illustrated the capabilities of CommunityViz and how we
can use it in the planning process. Hopefully this has stimulated some
creative juices in the audience and how they could use or benefit from
the decision of support tools like this. That\'s about it.\
\
Cathy: Heather, how about you? Do you have any thoughts?\
\
Heather: The CommunityViz software is an invaluable tool and portable
tool. We now have the ability to visually demonstrate to the public our
alternatives during EA public comment period. We will also have the
ability to address public concerns on-the-fly and be able to show our
constituents what the project will look like when it\'s done. Cathy?\
\
Cathy: Well, hopefully we\'ve showed you how GIS and planning are a
powerful tool when used together, but we think Ann Al driven has a few
words that sums it all up.\
\
Ann: Once we get that kind of transparency into the planning process,
the documentation phase, the draft EISs and the final plans and EISs
will become maybe 23409 less contentious, but certainly better
understood because folks will put the time in up front. And I think we
will have a better chance of not only getting decisions that most people
can accept, but also through the documentation of assumptions and
parameters in the environmental analysis and socio-economic analysis, I
think we\'re in a better place to survive litigation and actually move
on to implementation. I think these tools are taking us to the next step
to really get us to what was envisioned for public involvement and
planning for use of the public lands.\
\
Cathy: thanks, Ann, for taking the time to prepare those remarks for us.
And now that we\'ve shared some examples of how planning and GIS work
together, now it\'s time for us to hear from you. Our panel of experts
is here in the studio to answer your questions. So we\'re going to open
up the push-to-talk system and remember, when you do push and talk, give
us your name and where you\'re calling from first, and then I\'ll call
on you. You can also send us a fox or call us toll free using those
numbers that you see on your screen, and also remember don\'t forget to
phone in and be a part of our drawing for that funky cow print. You can
increase your chances to win every time you call, fax or push and talk
with us, and we\'ll enter your office in the drawing again. So we\'re
going to have our drawing at the end of the program, and now it\'s time
to hear from you. What can we clarify for you?\
\
This is Terry reed in Winnemucca, Nevada. Do you hear me?\
\
Hi, Terry, go ahead. Go ahead, Terry. Terry, we can hear you, go ahead.\
\
Terry, are you out there?\
\
Can you hear me now?\
\
Yes, we can.\
\
All right. We\'re about to start a large scale RMP covering seven or
eight million acres and the obvious questions we have is what does it
cost to acquire the software, what kind of data would we have to have
available to us, and would our \-- would a typical field office platform
run the software on that scale?\
\
Lex, do you want to take that one?\
\
Lex: Sure, I\'ll take that question. First of all, the cost of the
software is about \$5,000 for one seed of the software. To do a large
scale RMP, I actually worked on an RMP in lakeview, Oregon. It was on
the scale of millions of acres, and the software worked fine. You are
limited a little bit by the computing power but everything you\'ve seen
on my computer is done on laptops. That\'s all I ever use are the
laptops. It is dependent on the quality of your data. Depending on what
you wanted to measure. In this case, we measured indicators related to
fuel treatments. Depending on what you wanted to measure, that\'s when
you need certain data sets. Most of it runs off land use, Polly gan data
sets, point data sets, line data sets. Most of these indicators are
nonspatial and require summarization of research data. That\'s usually
available in terms of reports and tables, and that could be aggregated
and put into the models to feed it.\
\
When you do your fly-buys or fly-ins, what\'s the source of the data
that generates the three dimensional component?\
\
A good question. The sources for the fly-throughs you\'ve seen today are
USGS DEMs downloaded free on the Internet and satellite information from
the URDIAC database which has basically tiled satellite imagery for the
whole great basin. And then we used \-- as you came into the model, I
don\'t know if you remember this, but you get more detailed imagery. The
closer you are to your site, the specific site you are interested in,
then you can get more detailed data, more detailed DEMs. In this case I
used all 10-meter DEMs from the USGS but rendered them at different
resolutions so we could do a large region. This region here was 200
miles by 200 miles, probably. Around there.\
\
And that source of data generated cover type and tree and shrub height?\
\
That was generated from the GIS data that I got \-- I derived that from
aerial photography and expertise of our panel members, Heather and Doug.
They told me what the average height was. I derived that from regular
digital photographs and so on and so forth, and also, most of the model
was driven by fuel model information. There is a lot of U.S. Forest
Service fuel models that provide a picture and it also gives you heights
based on classifications like basil area, two inch basil area, versus 9
inch basil area. And you can put that information in the GIS. The GIS
attribute information actually helps create the models at the

right height and right spacing. So this 3D picture you are seeing, these
visualization aren\'t pretty pictures, they are linked directly back to
the dynamic GIS data.\
\
Does that answer all of your questions, Terry? I\'m assuming it does.
Okay. How about anybody else? Are there any other questions out there
for us?\
\
D.lloyd in the Elko field office.\
\
That was D.lloyd?\
\
D.lloyd, Elko field office.\
\
You\'re echoing. Could you turn down your TV when you are talking to us,
because you are echoing.\
\
Let me get my GIS guy here to turn it down.\
\
That sounds better. Go ahead with your question.\
\
Okay, the question has to do with the simulation of the treatment along
the highway or along the road where \-- can you actually show the
erosion that could occur along the highway based on the level of
treatment to reduce \-- to remove the fuels, to see how much erosion or
dust could get into the air, causing a visual impact to people driving
along the highway? Will it show that kind of thing?\
\
You can basically create models that depict these things. I actually
created a model in a different version of this that was a smoke plume
from a fire. If you are asking about dust storms recaused by removing
vegetation, you could model that. You could model different size dust
plumes based on different wind types. You can help estimate the amount
of erosion from the GIS layers themselves. You can estimate that \--
like we did with the universal soil equation, based on the size of the
disturbance or size of the vegetation removal. You could have a
calculate the estimated amount of material that could get into the air
based on an estimated wind speed, and then from there, create a
different size smoke plume for different types of wind activities. And
then you could put that in a 3D environment. We can do clouds, different
environmental parameters. If we switch over to the 3D right now, I can
show you how we can adjust something that would approach what you are
talking about, I think. So as you can see on the screen, I can adjust my
fog and the value. This isn\'t a smoke plume, but this shows you what it
would look like if you had a certain type of \-- certain magnitude of a
dust storm come in or snow storm or anything. I can change the color of
this. Let\'s change it to more of a dust color. That\'s a real dusty
day. You can see that simulates a dust storm, whatever intensity you
want. So that\'s one example right there.\
\
Does that answer your question?\
\
Yes, it does. Thank you very much.\
\
Great. How about somebody else out there?\
\
This is Cathy from Anchorage Alaska.\
\
Hi, Cathy, go ahead.\
\
Okay. We had a problem where we don\'t have current data, USGS products
as far as DEMs and USGS quads. My question is, how can we \-- I don\'t
see where we can use the products that you are indicating, but are there
other products out there that are available to us?\
\
Does anybody \--\
\
I can \-- I mean, I can answer something to that. Do you have any
elevation information, like, you know, GPS information or a type of
contours or anything like that?\
\
We may have 30-meter data in specific areas.\
\
You can use that data or you could also hook a GPS up to your truck,
drive around and use that data and integrate that data and create a
digital elvation model. Our software uses a huge variety of data
sources. You can use points, lines, even polygons. You can use the old
DEM maps as a base and use GPS to fill in the gaps.\
\
We don\'t even have old DMs\
\
Okay.\
\
And then as far as roads, we have few roads. We fly a lot of it. The
other question is, I didn\'t hear you say anything about land status.\
\
You could use \-- you could use land status as part of your constraints
or basically if you are only going to do things on BLM land, you can cob
strain it using land status. You can use land status. You can probably
create some form of digital elvation models out there based on data out
there. You just have to go out there and data mine and find out what you
have and see how well it fits. You don\'t really necessarily have to do
the 3D portion of this to make it effective. You could use it just with
the two dimensional GIS data. So I guess that\'s what I\'m saying. It\'s
dynamic enough that you don\'t have to have \-- you don\'t have to have
the three dimensional stuff in there. You can use the tools in a two
dimensional setting also.\
\
Doug and Heather, do you know of any other tools that can be used for
this?\
\
Or data sources?\
\
Yeah.\
\
I think some of the tools out there, there has been some decision
support tools we have developed within the BLM. I\'m aware of one called
KARAT out of Wyoming where they used those decision-support tools for
their applications for \-- I\'m not too familiar with it, but I know
it\'s out there. There is other \-- there is a few other things out
there. I\'m not too sure of how many are out there, but KARAT is one
that could be available. I know there\'s efforts to do more support
tools in GIS. But that\'s the best answer I can give you.\
\
Maybe she could contact the Wyoming state office to find out?\
\
Yeah.\
\
And did you have some information on data sources for her?\
\
Well, just a suggestion for data sources as we seek to engage local
governments, I know that many times they have data that\'s available and
I think Doug used the term \"data mining\" and being able to go out and
possibly incorporate county data into the program, might be an option,
or in your case, data from the bureau or from the city in Alaska. That
may be an option also.

Does that help you, Cathy?\
\
Yes, what you have is really dazzling and it\'s things we would like to
use, but we just look at it will be quite a ways in the future before
we\'ll be able to implement, but thank you very much.\
\
Thanks, Cathy for calling in. How about somebody else out there? Do you
have a question for us?\
\
Yes, this is Sabrina Flores from the field office. I have a question.\
\
Go ahead.\
\
Will this be a BLM standard application soon?\
\
Who wants to take that one?\
\
I hope so. I think what we\'re presenting here today is tools out there
that are out there, how we incorporate those into the BLM is not our
choice. We\'re just showing what really is the capabilities of GIS with
decision-support tools of any form be CommunityViz or anything else.
That technology is out there. We need to start using at least parts and
piece that is we have or maybe go further along with that. So it\'s just
\-- I can\'t answer whether it will go that way or not.\
\
That\'s a very good software tool that we like in our office, that\'s
why I was asking, and what would be a minimum computer SPECS \-- I know
it takes a lot of power to render a picture.\
\
Yeah, to do the 3D stuff you have to have a pretty good video card with
a minimum, I believe, of 32 megs of ram in that video card. Like I said
before, these are laptops. They aren\'t necessarily souped up laptops.
They are standard by today\'s standards. So we\'re offering technology
that really doesn\'t need a super computer or anything like that to run.
I can give you \--\
\
This is Dwayne from Oregon.\
\
Hi, Dwayne, go ahead.\
\
I have two questions. First off, I\'ll say it looks really great and
interesting. The two questions is, I know it\'s running on a PC. The
problem is, has it run on a machine that\'s been RIZ\'d. We\'re not
allowed to store data on a PC at this point. Has it been tested where
it\'s running off of a server? The second question is, what kind of
training is available and what\'s the cost?\
\
Okay, I think I\'ll answer your training question first. We offer two
types of training, basically. One is a standard training, that\'s in
Boulder, Colorado where we come down and teach you the standard
curriculum on the software. It gives you a really well-rounded education
on how to use the software and what data sources you may need and all of
that. We also have custom training which uses your data with your
projects on \-- usually on your site. You could have it in bolder or on
your site where one of our consultants like myself would come up to your
office and we would have a pilot project in mind. It can be a pilot
project or an actual project and we use your data and train you while
we\'re working on the project. This is a successful way to do training
because the participants are more enthusiastic. It\'s actually issues
data that really means something to them and it\'s for a project. So
when the consultant is done with training, he walks away \-- you not
only know how to use the project, but you have a considerable portion of
your project already finished. So that\'s personally the way I like to
do training. That costs \-- custom training costs anywhere from \-- you
know, probably \$1,000 a day for that. Usually it takes about three days
to do that depending on the nature of the project. Now getting back to
your other question, what was your other question?\
\
If \-- it\'s more of our RIZ machines and working off the server with
data. I ran the previous product which was an RTU on our RIZ machine. I
have not \-- I\'m getting the newest map version loaded hopefully as we
speak, and I\'ll be testing that later this month. But the RTU product
worked fine in that environment. So we will have to be a little \-- do a
little more investigation, but \-- I don\'t see too much problem with
it.

Thanks, Doug.\
\
Are you running the data off the server or your own machine?\
\
Go ahead and answer some of that.\
\
I was actually running the data off the server in our office. You know,
so I know it works across that way. We could pull that data across. So
it does work that way. At least in the R2 side. I haven\'t experienced
with the arc map product since it\'s new.\
\
The input data sets, the ones with the loss equation, it reads down
through soils and slopes and cover types and things like that and in my
examples, the forest treatment analyzes the cover type that \-- where
the treatment is placed and slopes and some other factors. Those input
data sets are context actual data sets and can be run from a server or
can be taken from the server. Automatically updating dynamic themes
reside in a personal geodatabase on your opinion. We can talk about the
details of that, and you can talk to some of our more technical staff or
programmers about details of that, if you have more specific questions,
but that\'s basically how the software works.\
\
Thanks Lex and Doug. We have a phone call from Leonard in Washington.\
\
Leonard, are you there?\
\
Hello, Cathy. This is Leonard GORE. I\'m calling from Washington D.C. I
have a question. The \-- first of all, thank you for the presentation.
It\'s really a neat tool. And according to the \-- you have planning
models and GIS. I\'m wondering, planning models is CommunityViz that
planning teams already have planning models in place to use with this
particular application?\
\
Let me see if I\'m understanding your question. Do we have premade
models that address specific planning issues?\
\
Yes, for example, if you have an office that would like to implement or
make use of this application, that that particular office should it
already have a planning model in place in which we basically have gone
through \-- that we have data, we basically have our data elements, we
have defined all of our information, should the planning team already
have like a model that you are working with.\
\
That\'s a great question. Most planning agencies that use GIS already
have a model. It doesn\'t necessarily mean it\'s a dynamic model like
CommunityViz, but they do have a set of methodologies where they measure
meaningful outputs from data. The nice thin about CommunityViz, it
automatically updates that and becomes a living dynamic model that you
don\'t have to \-- that you don\'t have recalculate manually. A lot of
them do have a methodology that we can incorporate into CommunityViz.
That\'s how we worked in the past. Or our team of consultants can go
into a place and create data sets and create methodologies. We\'re eager
to help people incorporate models or data into these types of more
useful models.\
\
In the case where a planning thing doesn\'t have a model in place, as
far as the question that Blaine asked about training, you have two types
standard and custom, in the customized train was modeling the \-- it
indicates where a model doesn\'t exist?\
\
We have service where with we can come in and help you identify
methodologies and see where the gaps are in your data, help you develop
stags for filling in data gaps and creating methodologies and even help
you set up assumptions. We\'re very flexible on that one.\
\
Thank you.\
\
You are welcome.\
\
And we have a phone \-- I mean a fax. We got a fax in from Leslie from
Hollister field office in California. And Leslie asks \"how soon will
the MTC be providing any training to use this program. It looks like a
good tool to do VRM an analysis.\
\
It looks like in the next year we\'ll be developing a training course.
So I hope that answers your questions. Is there another question?\
\
Cathy Kelly from canyon city, Colorado.\
\
Kelly?\
\
Jackie Kelly.\
\
Okay, go ahead, Jackie.\
\
It looks like a great tool that we would love to use in this office for
several different applications. However, we\'re wondering if you guys
are going to be submitting it to configuration management to for
approval as part of the baseline standard software?\
\
It is being considered.\
\
We can\'t purchase anything until it\'s been approved through
configuration management.\
\
Good point.\
\
We understand that. Anybody else want to add to that?\
\
Well, I think we were \-- you know, as I stated before, what kind of
demonstrating tools that are out there, whether it gets through
configuration management and it becomes part of our standard software.
We don\'t have any answer for you right now. We\'re just trying to
demonstrate that these tools are out there, let\'s think about how
we\'re going to think about how to do planning and GIS and integrate
them together. That\'s the best answer we can give you probably.\
\
We were just showing this today so that people know what\'s going on
with CommunityViz. We\'ve written down your question and I\'ll find out
more about that and \--\
\
Actually, it\'s more of a request for you to submit it.\
\
Great, great.\
\
All right, we\'ll get that. Thank you very much for your question and
comment. We\'ve still got a little bit more time. Are there any other
questions out there?\
\
Cathy, this is \--\
\
Hang on, I got Leah first.\
\
Leah, go ahead.\
\
This is Leah Stewart from Anchorage Alaska. Are you distributing an ARC
GIS yet or is this an \--\
\
This is on RTS. The whole demonstration it on the new product.
CommunityViz 2, scenario 360. That\'s all the new platform. And I wanted
to clarify the pricing. With our geocontract. I said the two pieces of
the software were \$5,000 total, they are \$2,000 each. When I say
module, the quantitative parts 2000 and the 3D parts 2000. They work
together seamlessly with the module.\
\
Thanks, Lex. Now, somebody else was trying to talk at the same time. Who
was that?\
\
I heard \-- now I heard two people and I heard somebody from Elko. Who
was from Elko?\
\
You want Elko first?\
\
Yeah, go ahead.\
\
As far as marketing this, have you had any experience with other
agencies and what\'s \-- how is it going with that? You know, with
them?\
\
We have reviewed the product with different agencies like the Forest
Service and the park service, and it\'s going well. I mean, we\'re
getting good results, getting good case studies built and we\'re eager
to do more work with all of the agencies.\
\
Isn\'t USGS using this also?\
\
I believe so. For details on our projects, our web site has a great
rundown on the projects that\'s happening.\
\
We\'ll give that web site at the very end.\
\
That\'s right.\
\
Okay. One other person that was trying to talk.\
\
He was trying to go again.\
\
Oh, I\'m sorry. Were you trying to go again from Elko?

I was just going to say that web sites aren\'t helpful right now.\
\
That\'s correct.\
\
You can get it from home, I guess. That\'s a good point. Was there
another part to your question, Elko many\
\
This is mark from Salem.\
\
Mark, go ahead.\
\
Yes, I\'d like to know what the yearly maintenance cost on the software
is after you purchase it?\
\
Another one for Lex?\
\
I\'ve heard it\'s \$1,000 maintenance per year.\
\
It\'s right around that. I can get that costing details from our web
site or give us a call in Boulder, we can give you some pricing options
and proposal format.\
\
There is a bug in my ear that tells me it\'s \$1,000 for the whole
thing.\
\
I wonder why my bug doesn\'t work?\
\
Are there any other questions out there? Comments in the field?\
\
Cathy, this is Karen from Phoenix.\
\
Hi, Karen, how are you doing?\
\
I\'m excellent, thank you.\
\
Great.\
\
I have a question \-- I understand the cost that we\'re describing, but
I\'m a little confused about kind of its usability with that cost,
because we all have our own unique GIS data. We don\'t really have
standards our attributes are different. If we really want to do analysis
for our plans and that kind of thing, the questions we want to answer
are going to maybe be a little different. The data we have available to
use is going to be different. Yeah, we can get this base CommunityViz
software, but won\'t additional pieces need to be developed or models
developed to actually use our unique data to answer the questions we
need to answer and how do we go about doing that and what\'s the cost
associated with it?\
\
Lex, do you want to take that?\
\
Lex: Those are good questions. Once again, it really depends on a few
things. It depends on what it is that you want to model. A lot of places
have unique questions and unique characteristics. But like I showed you,
this model is general enough and based on the fuel models of the Forest
Service develops, we can take this model to your forests and actually
change the assumptions, change the basic assumptions and have a simple
land use model and actually be able to do these models in your region.
This is a great \-- the idea here is spatial spreadsheet. You know, if
you plug a bunch of numbers in with EXCEL and it cranks out the results
at the bottom. That\'s similar to what this software does with spatial
data.\
\
I think you need to understand that the attributes that you have in your
special data or your, you know, your spatial data that\'s different from
\-- you know, since we don\'t have a lot of standards, this adds
attributes based on the model and the assumptions. You can model your
own constraints, you know, slope, soil differences because we\'ll have a
lot of that across different field offices, but I think what it does is
adds attributes and calculates on our assumptions and our constraint is
sort of limited to the differences that we have in our own data. So I
think \-- once you get a model of the fuels going, it really is
independent of the data in the structure.\
\
Okay. Can I ask another question?\
\
Sure.\
\
Go ahead.\
\
So I understand what you are talking about for a fuels modeling, but if
that\'s the question we need answered, if we need answers about growth
modeling and other things, or we want to model the effect of growth on
wildlife habitat in corridors and those kinds of things, I mean \-- we
can do that in GIS using GIS independent of CommunityViz, but it seems
like to link CommunityViz in, there would be some work required to do
that. Isn\'t that true?\
\
That\'s correct, but most of the work would be in formulating your
growth assumptions. For instance, if you were doing an analysis where
you want to see how growth would affect the habitat you would make \--
first of all, you would make a polygon coverage that represents future
growth, and that would automatically with community viz by writing a few
formulas, you could analyze where those growth polygons were, how much
wildlife habitat they covered and calculate those areas and then
multiply those areas by research, assumptions and variables derived from
detailed scientific research that your field experts may have done or
that exist in the BLM literature. So once you have that created, you can
explore multiple different land use alternatives, scenarios, either by
time or by, you know, different land-use types all together. You could
do times steps. Say in 10 years we have this polygon we\'ve calculated
using CommunityViz, then you run it through your model that analyzes the
wildlife impact. Once you have that built, you can do an enormous amount
of analysis on the sly. Whereas with regular GIS you would have to do it
manually for every data set and you\'ll lose the spontaneity in the
model.\
\
Is that work that you would do for us or is that work that our GIS staff
would have to do or be able to do or is it a combination of both?\
\
It\'s a combination of both. We like to teach people how to fish as well
as give them hooks and poles. Who best to teach you \-- we would be
happy to have our services department get you up and running with
training and with your data sets on some modeling. We would be exstatic
to do this. How much time and labor does it take to develop the fire
model that you were talking about?\
\
Oh, it\'s taken up pretty much every second of the past two weeks of my
life pretty much. A couple of weeks probably to get all of the data
together and get the visualization built. It\'s a two-week project. Two
straight weeks and weekends.\
\
We used a numbers right off the sort of those photos, sheets that we
have that show fuel models, estimating what your fuel type is. We took
those numbers right off there into a DBS file and handed them to LexLex
and he linked those in to how CommunityViz does the dynamic changes and
how you can change your assumptions if that doesn\'t really fit where
you\'re at on the landscape. So I think there is some upfront work but
in the long run, if you\'re doing more and more projects of the same
type, you\'re going to become more and more efficient about how those
\-- more and more efficient every time you do another one, so, you know,
I\'m sure there is some upfront time but we\'re looking at long-term
benefits here.\
\
A lot of it \-- the work, too, is gathering \-- understanding what it is
you want to measure, first of all, and then gathering the information,
the defense Cybill data which exists as research. There is tons of
research done on all of this stuff. It\'s a matter of putting it in the
format that the software can use. Once you have it in there, boy, you
have this wide geo-spatial data. So the way we like to do it as
consultants, we help train and do some of the higher level stuff right
off the bat and hopefully, you know, the field experts can give us that
data in a usable format. All of the data is there and there is not too
much prep time. Models like this can be made quickly when you get to the
nuts and bolts of CommunityViz.\
\
Thanks, you guys. We just got a fax in. This fax is anonymous, and I
wanted to remind you, when you fax or call in, then if you put your
office name on there, you get entered into the funky cow drawing. This
person won\'t get entered in, but any way, this first question is two
questions. The first one is for Cynthia, and they are saying that they
have a counties as cooperating agencies and they are wondering how
counties would \-- how it would impact counties and how it would benefit
from the BLM using this tool in the planning process or NEPA process.\
\
Good question. The Bureau of Land Management has been encouraging our
offices to continue inviting counties and local governments as well as
cooperating agencies. This tool will provide an opportunity for BLM to
just further that engagement by going out to the county and developing
alternatives, plugging in basic assumptions by the county or various
alternatives by the county. You can see in real time what those
assumptions and alternatives will result in, how they would look if they
are actually implemented on the ground. So we feel that the CommunityViz
tool or other tools like it could only help us engage our county and
local governments as coop operators, as with going through our planning
process.\
\
Okay, thank you. The second question on this fact, this one is for
Heather and they are saying that we had mentioned educating the public
using this tool to educate the public. Could you talk a little bit about
how you could use this tool to educate the public?\
\
Heather: Sure. I big part of my job is going into the communities with
Utah state division of forestry fire and state land and educating the
communities on how to reduce the impact of fire on their homes and
surrounding area. Most communities border BLM land land or trust land,
and we can create pictures that basically represent what we want the
project to look like when it\'s done. Oftentimes people will go into the
communities from the government and talk government ESE. This gives us a
way to translate into pictures so we can show them where we want things
to end up in terms of the project and how they will be impacted by fire
before the project is done, and after the project is done. So it\'s a
really ideal teaching tool.\
\
Oh, great. We have time for two more push to talk questions, if anybody
has more questions, and then we\'ll go to the drawing and some other
things.\
\
This is Paul in Salem.\
\
Hi, Paul, how are you doing?\
\
Doing well, Cathy.\
\
Cathy: Good. One question I was wondering about was showing economic
impacts. I know that\'s one thing that the counties are interested in.
So I suppose you could just plug into the formulas and get economic
impacts as well. I guess I also let Cynthia know that a lot of our
counties are wanting to be paid for information from the counties and so
whatever she can do to help us with that would be helpful.\
\
Thanks for that.\
\
Cathy: Paul, did you want to comment on the economics?\
\
Yeah, I guess, have you used or displayed economic impacts, I guess,
most of our discussion is about resource impacts.\
\
If we switch onto my computer, the red one here, I can illustrate some
of the impacts, socio-economic impacts of the different phases. I\'ll
give it a chance to update here. We\'ve got a bunch of indicators. The
meaningful indicators for the fuel loads in native grasslands, treatment
costs and socio-economic ones. So right here we\'ve got our total cost
for this phase. Let\'s say our total costs will be \$160,000. Now we
know from a typical fire activity that a certain percentage of that goes
into local economy, based on contracting. So we can look at our
assumptions and see what we used for that. So that\'s the beauty of this
transparent model. You know about .25 of it goes for \-- to the private
sector. For the bullhog, 100% of it goes to it.

If the BLM buys the bullhog, this goes down and this is the number that
goes into the economic value of the local economy. It\'s numbers like
this, you know, you have to derive them from research. But once you can
internalize this into the project, any change I make to the treatment,
geographically, you get an update on the computer as well as these
assumptions. And so the BLM project we did in lakeview, we looked at
visitation patterns based on land use type. If we were making different
land use designations based on different alternatives, each alternative
had a different set of numbers related to visitation, hunting, revenue,
off highway vehicle use and recreation revenues based on land use
patterns. It\'s a sum marization of that kind of research. So you can
glean very meaningful socio-economic data from land use patterns and
project it onto the landscape.\
\
We have time for one more quick question. If anyone has got a quick one
out there.\
\
Cathy \--\
\
I heard \-- well, I heard John Cartwright and a heard a woman. Cathy?
How about John, you go ahead.\
\
Okay, this is John cartwright in Boise, Idaho. I understand this is a
visualization tool and LexLex calls it defensible data. I don\'t
understand that. What goes into that?\
\
The point of defencesible data by using our HTML reporting capability,
you can \-- by use our HTML reporting capability, you can look at all of
the rationale that went into the decision. You look at the assumptions
that fed the model and relate those to the research that was sum marized
as well as you can show the public what the relationships were in terms
of the formulas, what your data sources were in an easy way. That\'s
what I meant by defensible data. Also, you can look at how these photo
session were derived from the fuel models based on the work of those
fuel model characteristics that have a stereo graphic photographs. So
you can relate all of what went into your model, you can go into one
report that\'s easy to access to the public as well as for your peers.
Does that answer your question?

Essentially you\'ve created data for your moderate.\
\
Yes, it\'s a metadata in a user friendly package and shows all of the
assumptions and the stuff, the meat of the model. It\'s very accessible.
It\'s not the black box that a lot of models are. It\'s very
transparent, accessible.\
\
Thanks, John. We\'ll take that one last from Cathy, was it?\
\
Cathy, this is Joan from I MTMS.\
\
Hi, Joan. What I wanted to know is we keep talking about socio-economic
data. Is there social data you\'ve looked at with this model in terms of
qualitative data?\
\
Good question.\
\
That\'s a great question. We have used \-- we\'ve used a lot of census
data. They break down socio-economic data in a meaningful way. Now, in
terms of qualitative data, we have created, you know, interfaces where
you can actually use input from the public on qualitative information
like, for example, you know, how close is too close for a new factory to
houses is fairly qualitative but it can be quantified as well. You can
take survey results and actually put them into the software and build
those into your equations, and you just have to make sure that the
public understands the assumptions and how the models are created in
order for them to get a buy-in on it, but you can do that in a public
hearing or in terms of a survey or actually in terms of letting the
public kind of, you know, answer the questions when you create these
dynamic data sets you can have user prompts like with the fire treatment
plan, I drew a fire treatment plan on the landscape and it said what do
you want to do here? You can have other questions,like how much do you
value your view shed versus your wildlife habitat. You can answer these
questions. And it pop plates the databases and forms calculations and
can now put a land use map that fulfills what the users\' inputs were,
what the users preferences were. These are exciting application that is
we look forward to using the software with.\
\
Something that occurred to me when you were talking is you could model
census data here and look at it from the perspective of \-- could it be
seen from other places and that would be an input where the public sees
areas that are most important to them. I don\'t know if you\'ve done
anything like that, but I think that\'s something that\'s going to
become more and more important.\
\
Yes, indeed. Let\'s do a project on that.\
\
Cathy: Okay, we\'re running short of time. I want to thank you for your
questions and comments. This has been really great. Hopefully now you
understand a little bit better what a GIS-based decision support tool
like this CommunityViz is all about, and how this type of technology can
improve our planning processes and our interactions with the public, and
how we can be more proactive rather than reactive. Before we do our
drawing for the funky cow print, I\'d like to get a few closing comments
from our panel members. Doug, let\'s start with you. As a GIS
coordinator at the field office level, do you have any final words?\
\
Doug: Sure, I think linking the visuals of GIS and the knowledge base of
our specialists is what the decision support tools like CommunityViz can
accomplish. Friction a lot of wildlife specialists know first hand on
the ground the habitat issues, can incorporate their hard earned
knowledge with the visual tools offered by the GIS. These are invaluable
for land use planning activities. This marriage of visuals and firsthand
knowledge is necessary for making better and more defensible decisions.\
\
Cathy: Thanks, Doug. Heather, how about you? Any last words from your
perspective since you work in an interagency fire district?\
\
Heather: More and more projects are being done on a multiple agency
level. All of the agencies have similar concerns and different agendas.
CommunityViz will be able to take in all concerns and goals to help
planners make educated and defensible decisions. The software is also a
great tool during the public education process. Essentially, we will
have pictures that will show what we are talking about.\
\
Cathy: And how about you, Lex. You\'ve talked a lot in this program do
you have any last comments about BLM, planning and CommunityViz?\
\
Lex: It\'s been great working with the BLM and I look forward to
information. I would say check our web site when you can at web web or
call us in bolder at 303-442-8800. Look forward to it.\
\
Cathy: Thanks, Lex. And how about you, Cynthia, based on your work with
the counties, do you have final thoughts from the role of planning tools
like CommunityViz?\
\
Cynthia: Yes, Cathy. The National Association of Counties, also known as
NACO, and local governments are key BLM partners. And the National
Association of Counties is promoting the use of tools like CommunityViz
among its partners, along with edge way, they are looking to use tools
like CommunityViz in the county\'s planning efforts. You may ask why.
Well, with the Gunnison project you saw there was a good example of how
this technology allows for meaningful local government involvement by
way of Gunnison county and the Gunnison community on awide range of
environmental and socio-economic issues. Likewise, as we heard earlier,
CommunityViz was used to develop BLM\'s lake view, Oregon resource
management plan and that proved invaluable to the lake county officials,
as well as the lake county community, and the BLM. It\'s no secret that
many of our land use planning decisions have been challenged, protested
and appealed. And by using tools like CommunityViz, it strengthens our
ability to work with the public early and often. Building capacity among
local governments to engage in our planning process, it\'s a true
Hallmark of collaboration, and in that vein, BLM is definitely at the
forefront.\
\
Cathy: Great, thank you, Cynthia. And now it\'s time for our funky cow
drawing, and so what I would like to do is mix these up. I sure hope the
training center is in this drawing. Cynthia, would you like to pick? And
the winner is Elko field office. \[ APPLAUSE \]

Great, well, we hope that the funky cow print adds interest to your
office decor. That wraps it up for our NEPA planning forum. I want to
say a special thanks to Diane Nelson. Without her, none of this would
have happened. She did a lot of work and she helped to \-- well, she got
the funky cow print for us. And so, we\'re planning to do more NEPA
planning forum telecasts. If you could please let me know if there is
any topics you would like us to feature. One topic we\'ve been thinking
about addressing is FACA. If you have any ideas, that\'s the federal
advisory committee act. If you have any ideas, please send me an E-mail
or give me a call. Thanks again for your time and so long from the
national training center in Phoenix.\
\
Announcer: This broadcast has been a production of the BLM national
training center. .