Bringing Technology to the Resource Manager

Many natural resource managers envision their jobs as pressed between the resources that they have a mandate to manage and the technological aides that are essential tools to conduct those management activities. On the one hand, managers are straining to understand an extremely complex array of natural systems and the management pressures placed on those systems. Then, at the same time, managers are expected to perform their management tasks using tools that few individuals understand well enough to apply to their fullest advantage. We need to provide resource managers with technologies that operate intuitively and are well-adapted for natural resource problems. To do this, we must deliver technology to managers in a manner that integrates the technology almost seamlessly with managers' ways of thinking and performing their work. Unfortunately, it has been the historical pattern to ask, instead, that managers conform to the technology. This mechanocentric attitude is counter-productive. Innovations in human-machine interfaces are essential "translators" between managers and management tools. Recent work in the areas of visualization, virtual reality, spatial data management, and intelligent systems will enable us to lay existing technologies right into the hands of managers, rather than drop those technologies at their feet.