Legislative Fiscal Division unveils wildfire risk and cost models for Montana lawmakers

At a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee, Legislative Fiscal Division staff demonstrated interactive wildfire data tools designed to help lawmakers see historical fires, suppression costs and mitigation activity and to run scenarios for budget and policy questions.

The presentation, led by Legislative Fiscal Division staffers Amy Carlson, Nick Van Brown, Alice Hecht and Robert Miller, showed linked “MARA” modules and a wildfire-specific dashboard that contains more than a century of perimeter data, roughly 20 years of suppression-cost records and 10 years of mitigation project records. "Wildfire is a ... major risk to the state and its partners. It's a very large and unpredictable cost," said Alice Hecht, a legislative fiscal division presenter.

Why it matters: Committee members were shown how the tools can be used to trace where suppression and mitigation dollars have gone, estimate future fiscal exposure, and map which properties sit in the wildland-urban interface. The models are built to be updated live with new data and to accept scenario inputs from lawmakers and staff.

What the tools show: Nick Van Brown, who described the office’s new modular approach, said the models combine many data sources into base models that can be forecasted and run…