The Forest Service’s Region 8

The Forest Service groups various forests into different regions. There are 9 different regions covering the lower 48 states as well as Alaska and Puerto Rico. Region 8 covers the Southeastern portion of the lower 48 including Puerto Rico. It utilizes a series of dashboards for the region as an easy way to visualize and interact with data for the Region as well as the Forest Level. Regional managers and staff have utilized these dashboards as a way to view and access information and reporting for various activities represented in the dashboard. Some maintenance and updates to the processes and references to new data were needed to ensure the existing dashboards were running smoothly and reporting information correctly. This is due to changes with data and automated processes used to populate the information for the dashboard.

Existing Dashboards in Need of Maintenance

Region 8 has several dashboards that report Trails and Road information. Also, a separate dashboard focused on Fire and Timber. Assistance with updates to reporting, widget development and editing, along with visual design were requested to support and maintain the existing dashboards. Xentity Team member Critigen assisted this request addressing these requests. They also worked with FME workbenches used for data Extraction, Transformation, and Loading (ETL) processes. Then they automate these processes to pull data from various FS corporate databases.  References and data links required updates to address missing or outdated references to source data. This work involved troubleshooting outdated and broken links to datasets. Also, determining underlying access and permission issues for various databases. Work also involved troubleshooting network and security changes and issues.  

Dashboards were available to the Forest Service and regional staff after addressing the underlying dashboard issues related to data, access and performance. Fulfilling a valuable role in being able to visualize, report, and address information for the region related to trails, roads, fire and timber. These dashboards serve as a meaningful tool for the Forest and the Region. They allow managers, data stewards and staff the ability to easily identify data gaps and capture this information.

Up To Date

Through the use of dashboards, Region 8 can view and have up to date reporting information for resource areas. This includes roads, trails, fire and timber. This allows resource areas the ability to track accomplishments. Also to report this information to managers and decision makers at the Forest, Region, and National levels.