Summary

The Forest Service Chief Information Office (CIO) is responsible for the management of the agency’s infrastructure, services, and applications used to conduct and deliver work. Enhancements to the Harvested Wood Product Calculator (HWPC) application are necessary to ensure accessibility for agency users, stakeholders, and partners. Refinements and updates to the HWPC model are also required to ensure application performance and efficiency are maintained while output deliverables are optimized for end users.

The U.S. Forest Service is a federal agency and subcomponent of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Forest Service is a land management agency that protects and manages 154 national forests and 20 grasslands in 44 states and Puerto Rico, encompassing 193 million acres of land, in addition to numerous wilderness, recreation, scenic, and other areas. The agency’s mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation’s forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations.

Problem and Solution

Effective tools and applications are vital for the stewardship of USFS resources and land management. The HWPC is used to assess, track, and report carbon storage across National Forest System (NFS) lands. The calculation of carbon stored in products harvested by the US Forest Service over time plays a crucial role in temporal storage and emissions. The Office of Sustainability and Climate (OSC) recognizes the importance the HWPC plays in modeling carbon across NFS lands at the Forest level. The current application generates outputs that are used by Tableau for report generation, statistical analysis, and data visualization. This enhances the agency’s forest management practices and supports broader sustainability, carbon storage, emissions, and climate objectives. 

The Forest Service CIO seeks contractor support to complete the harvested wood product carbon application and make it available to end users. This includes adjustments to the technical aspects of the application’s model as well as the access, operational speed, and output delivery functions.

Solutions

Xentity provided operations and maintenance support to guarantee seamless and efficient operations, minimize errors and downtime, and ensure maximum user satisfaction. To Operate, Test, and Document Infrastructure to required related cadences and assignments, Xentity supported System Engineer for CI/CD/ITSM and Infrastructure Architect Advisory. Xentity also monitored the application and infrastructure of related services and provided technical support to ensure the ongoing operation and reliability of the system. Furthermore, security activities related to operating, testing, and Document Infrastructure support include security cadences and plausible Security documentation and response needs.

Xentity also undertook development and testing tasks to ensure the software functions correctly and to conduct new and repaired application components. For development, Xentity conducted some of the following activities:

• Troubleshoot and correct deficiencies and/or errors
• Recreate uncertainty analysis companion to model by revising existing methodology (Monte Carlo analysis of multivariate triangular distributions) to align with new coding approach and mechanics of the model, correcting erroneous calculations produced by the previous web-based model and adhering to IPCC uncertainty requirements.
• Add the ability to model multiple jurisdictions harvests for the same period (e.g., entire state, broken into State lands, private lands, and various tribal lands and federal agencies)
• Augmented interactive results viewer to allow users to select one or more jurisdictions.
• Develop, deploy, and incorporate a technique to summarize forest reports that include Regional and National Totals.

Furthermore, for testing tasks, Xentity tested any new, refactored, repaired, enhanced, or debugged application components. This ensures their operability and compliance with FS regulations and requirements.

Outcome and Benefit

The outputs from the application’s model are used in several ways. They are provided to a Tableau platform for easy access. Then, another university partner will insert results into a report for each National Forest. The National Forest reports include descriptions of unique data sources, harvest records, as well as carbon storage and emissions time series data. With this in mind, the application must run correctly. So, through our efforts, the software functions properly and meets the needs of the end users. Also, new and repaired application components have had operability and compliance ensured. All of which ensures the app’s ability to function properly in its designed role.