Designing a wildfire risk assessment case study with Swan River First Nation

This past spring, ApexRMS joined Swan River First Nation (SRFN) for a case study design workshop in Kinuso, Alberta. The two-day session helped shape a cloud-based wildfire risk assessment and scenario exploration tool being developed by SRFN, ApexRMS and Apropos Information Systems. The goal of the tool is to help communities like SRFN evaluate land management scenarios and weigh their trade-offs across cultural, ecological, economic, and safety values.

A community-wide conversation

Co-led by Todd Bailey (SRFN) and Leonardo Frid (ApexRMS), the workshop brought together roughly 60 participants. Attendees included SRFN Knowledge Keepers, Elders, and Youth, neighbouring Sawridge First Nation, regional NGOs, forestry companies, and provincial and federal government representatives.

Grounding the tool in community priorities

The workshop combined presentations, live demonstrations, breakout sessions, and a site visit to translate SRFN’s priorities into concrete scenarios for the tool, which is built on SyncroSim packages including BurnP3+ and ST-Sim. Presentations from wildfire and Indigenous fire policy experts, including Denyse Dawe (NRCan), Robert Gray (R.W. Gray Consulting Ltd), Joshua Mitchell (NRCan), and Jesse Sumner (Alberta Forestry and Parks), gave participants a shared technical foundation for the discussions that followed.

Shaping the case study

Workshop discussions centered on the priority areas, time horizons, and values most important to SRFN, from wildlife habitat and water systems to ceremonial grounds and community infrastructure. Participants worked through a baseline scenario and three alternatives to explore how different management choices could shape wildfire risk over the coming decades. These ranged from SRFN-led cultural and prescribed burning, to fuel reduction around the community, to shifting ignition patterns driven by population growth and land use change. Conversations also addressed how community-held knowledge, such as traplines and traditional land use information, should be incorporated into the tool, with data sovereignty and access central to that discussion. 

ApexRMS thanks Todd Bailey and the Swan River First Nation community for hosting the workshop and sharing their knowledge and priorities so openly. Work on the case study, including data collection and scenario modeling, will continue in the coming months.