3. RESEARCH TO ELABORATE A CAPITALISATION METHOD.

   In our study, the experience to be capitalised depends on the scenery of the management activity of the fight against forest fires. This capitalisation of knowledge requires its modelling and a choice of the suitable representations for the actors/actresses in the fighting management performances. If the modelling has been realised following the classical pattern the definition of the experience to be capitalised needs an accurate analysis of what the concrete experience of the acting area is made up with.

   The definition of experience firstly starts with the comprehension and analysis of the activity, that is, the organisation and management of fighting. A diagram of this activity and its different tasks is presented in Figure 2 in which the checking task has been considered as the main one therefore, the modelling and definition of experience are directed by this task.

     In order to represent the activity of fighting management it is necessary to understand the activity. In our case, this means to know what a fire is, what the fighting is about and the fighting organisation (structure, procedures, rules for the activity,...) which the role of each actor/actress is (the different specialities or functions and responsibilities) and which the relationships are among them. This main idea leads all the analysis methods: readings and analysis of the theoretical or training documents, the interviews and observations carried out in order to identify the tasks and to define the experience of the activity.

     Reading and analysing documents give a formal vision of the activity when they are documents about operational organisation ,as for instance the Andalusian INFOCA Plan, or an ideal sight when it is about the use of manuals for the training in fighting techniques against forest fires. Undoubtedly, both make possible achieve a first knowledge of the activity. The documents or reports that can be found at different levels of organisation: regional (COR- Regional Operating Centre-), provincial (COP- Provincial Operating Centre-) and sub-provincial (CEDEFO-Centre for Forest Defence) make also possible know which pieces of information are at each level.

     The aim of the interviews carried out at each level of the organisation follows the main idea but pointing towards the function, towards the responsibilities of the interviewed person and towards his/her experience in fighting. Interviewing is the means to which theory and practice of the responsible people in charge can be faced up so that some information about their experience can be obtained.

     Finally, their observations during the fight give a point of view about the practice: seeing a fire in its real development. Perceiving the practice in real time and managing the resources determined by time, managing the plans with the inherent limitations of the fighting, feeling the stress levels and becoming conscious of the responsibilities give us the set of circumstances which make up the capitalisation of the experience process.

  3.2. Tasks for the fighting management activity

     The aim of the management of the fighting is to apply the attack plans in order to extinguish the fire and to defend the environment. A fire, when fighting, is an organised set of operations which requires combat resources to reach the fixed aim. The activity carried out by the person in command charge is divided into two big tasks: the first is about the situation diagnosis, and the second about planning if it is the first attack or about plan checking if it is about the next attacks.

  The plan checking means the re-evaluation of the current plan suitability, the elaboration of the modifications in order to maintain or make it better and the applying of these modifications. What is more, fire is a dynamic phenomenon which is developed in a real world so the activity depends on a dynamic environment whose main characteristic is the presence of undesirable events. These events act in an interactive way with the activity in a more or less important way and they also urge the responsible person to react. This reaction means a situation diagnosis and it is often followed by a checking plan if the diagnosis reveals that the event disturbs the current plan.

  During the fighting, sharing experience may be the most profitable act for the checking task. As we want to define the experience to be capitalised, our attention is focused on the experience used in this task. Among other factors, for the checking task we need to known:

     . the physical state of the fire (development, type, parameters which characterise the several fronts)
     . the environment context or parameters which influences fire physically as topography, vegetation and meteorology.
     . the area and its sub-structures as housing, or camping zones.
     . the current plan.
     . the event which repeals the plan.
     . the available resources and their function to elaborate the plan modifications.

  All these last points are present in the experience which is to be capitalised since they represent the checking context, that is, the context of the used checking experience. This experience is defined by:

     . the actions and decisions taken to apply the plan modifications.
     . the explanations or reasons of these decisions
     . and their effects.

  This experience is placed in a checking chapter after the fighting during the experience capitalisation in a post-operative phase.
Another important point is to emphasise the space and time extension of this chapter in relation with the development of the management against fire. The following part is about this point

  3.3. The structure of experience

  This part proposes the chosen structure to represent the activity and its space and time division. The fire development, from the beginning to the end, is compounded according to the time axis by a set of successive situations. Each situation corresponds to the description of the fight to extinguish fires and to protect the forest areas, to a moment of the fire development. The fight is described by a set of plans and each of them is applied to a sector which divides the situation in a space mode. Then, the diagram of the fighting management is determined by a time division which is the fighting management that takes place during a situation , and by a space division which is the fighting management that takes part in a sector. The space division defines the extension of the plan checking chapter.

   The main concepts which structure the fighting management knowledge against forest fires are the following:

   . The situation described by the state of the fire advance in an instant (t) and the fight carried out by the description of the attack plan. A new situation is considered when the plan has to be modified after an event has been repealed by the plan.
   . The sector is the concept which divides the situation. The example in the enclosed document presents a situation divided into two sectors (see the LEX card 2 sketch). While the fire is spreading away the front(s) is(are) going directionally towards different geographical zones. The zones differ one from each other according to the topography, the vegetation sub-structures,...Therefore, several fighting operative procedures have to be taken into consideration and carried out in order to keep the accurate suitability for the zone characteristics. That is why the situation is made up with sectors, being each of them characterised by an active front(vs. extinguished), the attack plan against this front and a zone of future reaching (the geographical fire advance)
   . The attack plan describes the organisation of the operations carried out and the combat resources required to reach a concrete aim in the fight.
   . The event is the concept that is going to provoke the checking of the plan if it implies a compulsory change; that is, when the circumstances imposed by the generated event imply a new situation. In this case the event is called repealing event and it can be of different types: a re-activation of the front, a significant change of any meteorological parameter as wind speed or direction, and it can have different consequences. In the example, the event can be represented by the use of a new combat resource (see LEX card 2 in the enclosed document)

  According to the analysis carried out through the readings and document analysis, the interviews and observations, the definition of the obtained experience is registered by the records of the decisions and agreements taken by the technical command of the extinction through the use of the so-called capitalisation tools and which are defined by the LEX card series. Seven cards have been elaborated, distributed and used during the '98 campaign in each of the provinces within the operative organisation of the fighting in Andalucia. This elaboration has been carried out in an interactive way among the technicians and forest agents who may take part as responsible people in charge and who has also validated these cards. In order to show the followed procedures of capitalisation we are going to explain the method and tools that have been used in order to make real experiences objective.