PARTNERS: Shasta-Trinity National Forest, USDA Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station, University of North Carolina Asheville's National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC)

SUMMARY: The CRAFT toolset, designed primarily as a regional planning tool for use in a facilitated team environment, will be developed for application to complex spatial and temporal problems. CRAFT represents a synthesis of three overlapping approaches to managing risks and tradeoffs in natural resource management: ecological risk assessment, decision analysis, and decision protocols. CRAFT is a flexible framework to support planning, analysis, and decision making in most contexts and looks at competing risks and decisions based on this analysis. EFETAC and NEMAC personnel will serve as team facilitators that are familiar with CRAFT and by facilitating this process, EFETAC will be building the capacity of regional teams and natural resource managers to make strategic decisions. In addition to improving end-user capabilities and expertise for comparative risk assessment, CRAFT aims to increase knowledge of risks and uncertainties related to ecological conditions and environmental threats.    

STATUS: Ongoing

PROGRESS: CRAFT has been launched. The CRAFT website provides the user an overview of the CRAFT decision making process and hosts an interactive tutorial that illustrates the utility of Bayesian Belief Networks. In addition, this website provides an entry into the CRAFT Portals, a project-specific content management system for CRAFT teams. Each Portal features administrative features for teams, including team lists, document libraries, a calendar, and more. The Portal also has CRAFT-specific functions like the CRAFT Wizard, a database-driven online application that allows teams to be led through the CRAFT process. A CRAFT user will also find an encyclopedic application called CRAFTiPedia on the website that provides the more detailed information that is needed for a CRAFT analysis. 

LINKS:

CRAFT

UNC Asheville's National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC) 

CONTACT:

• Jim Fox, Director of Operations, jfox@unca.edu or (828) 301-2075
• Karin Lichtenstein, Project Manager, klichten@unca.edu or (828) 250-3892

Updated October 2009