The Blog

This blog was started in 2019 to discuss design in emergency management. After that series, it felt like it had reached a natural conclusion. The blog then explored human dimensions, sense-making, design, chaos and complexity, understanding and changing public safety organizations, unsustainability and the future and wildfire. This blog has long supported my ability to help others and create research shared with others at conferences and through publications.

This blog travels in four main directions: design, public safety, the future, and human dimensions.

Sometimes they intersect. This blog features longer posts to follow a narrative or exploration that goes. The shortest posts are around a thirty-minute read and the longest ever written was an 85-minute read. This blog follows a more philosophical writing style even when grounded in biology or complexity. It uses fiction where crafting a story is more valuable than the precise academic delivery, while with few exceptions, providing in-text citations supporting the writing.

If you are interested in the study and practice of design and the management of physical risks like wildfires, you will probably find something interesting here.

The Bio

Gregory Vigneaux holds a B.S. in Wildland Fire Management and an M.S. in Emergency Services Administration. He has worked on Hotshot Crews for the National Park Service and the United States Forest Service, as well as a Type II Initial Attack Crew with a heavy focus on fuels management in the region and local unit through mechanical thinning, pile burning, and prescribed burning in the region and home unit. He has fought fires in twelve states coast to coast, including Alaska and a heavy concentration in California, including wind driven fires, wildland-urban interface fires, and a majority in the backcountry. He primarily worked on saw teams, which was his initial goal. A small selection of the fires Gregory fought have been integrated into textbooks that taught subsequent generations.

After wildfire, he finished a graduate degree. Upon completion, he entered consulting and academia. During this time, Gregory served as a learning mentor, teaching and research assistant in emergency management graduate programs in the U.S. and New Zealand. He cofounded a startup and consulted for another. Gregory was a consultant, subject matter expert, self-study course designer for FEMA, and a research consultant for Save the Children. Gregory is the original developer of the "Systems Thinking" course at the Center for Homeland Defense and Security and is the author of "A Design Philosophy for Emergency Management" in the Design for Emergency Management textbook. To share and progress his research and understanding, Gregory has delivered nearly twenty unique conference lectures on his research and written sixty blog posts to explore new areas.

Gregory is the founder, Chief Consultant, and Design Officer at Operational Coherence. He helps others by researching how design, biology, and complexity can be used in emergency and wildfire management. He is currently establishing a new narrative on naturalizing community resilience-building in a hard science, which will be published this Spring.

Sincerely,

Gregory Vigneaux, M.S.