The mission of the Human Performance Research, Development & Application (RD&A) is to improve the health, safety, performance, and resilience of the Forest Service at individual, team, and organizational scales. Its objective reflects recognition that risk (broadly defined as potential for unwanted outcome) includes both awareness and management of choices and trade-offs while pursuing goals, and how we prepare for and recover from inevitable stressors and unwanted outcomes. From this perspective, sustained high performance is about understanding how people adaptively and collectively manage stress and recovery and about how they manage risk to operate safely in complex systems.

The unit will link leading researchers from a variety of theoretical and applied disciplines with Forest Service practitioners, interagency fire managers, and others to promote leading edge practice of resilience, risk management, comprehensive wellbeing, leadership, and human performance. The RD&A will pursue this high priority work using the following methods: 1.Conduct participatory action-research on high performance and resilience with a variety of partners. 2.Synthesize relevant research on high performance, resilience, risk management and leadership. 3.Articulate foundational theories and practices that promote high performance, learning and resilience. 4.Advance capacity and leadership development for high performance particularly in high risk situations.

The website contains several toolboxes that guide health and wellness activities and gives suggestions for support and pertinent reading.