Federal Level: The NWS R2O office interacts many offices and labs within NOAA as well as agencies such as US Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Energy (Argonne National Lab), US Geological Survey, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The R2O office also interacts with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and the National Center of Atmospheric Research both located in Boulder CO. This interaction, along with collaboration with offices, labs and centers within NWS, OAR and NESDIS, invigorates and expands improvements in the use of observations for validating models and enhancing situational awareness during wildfires, positions land management agencies to be prepared for new weather technology and techniques, and fosters discussion that leads to improved R2O.
State Level: The R2O office also collaborates with state agencies in various states such as Colorado and California. There are quite a few states, many with reps in the Western Governors Association and interacting with the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise ID, who have taken it upon themselves to develop legislation and procure funding for enhancing weather support to firefighters. This was shown with Colorado which funded Fire Behavior Model work at NCAR starting in 2016.
Academia: Over the past two decades the R2O group has been collaborating with many universities such as the University of Maryland College Park, Colorado State University, University of Utah, University of Colorado Boulder, San Jose State University, University of California at Los Angeles and University of Wisconsin Madison to incorporate expertise in fire weather modeling, fire weather observations and analysis, data assimilation, etc. Much of this research is at RL 1 to 4, but there is quite a bit either ready to go into evaluation for operational use or could be moved up to higher RL levels with coordination with Fed and State agencies.
