The efficiency analysis of the fire control operations using the VISUAL-SEVEIF tool

Abstract

The suppression costs represent a significant proportion of the total budget available for forest fire protection programs. The need to make efficient use of available budgets requires directing funding towards areas with the lowest costs and maximum benefits. Accordingly, incorporating econometric tools enables establishing criteria to optimize budget allocation. Modelling the fire suppression process and budget allocation requires knowing how suppression is managed, how resources are dispatched and how costs are incurred. The methodological approach presented here allows forecasting fire suppression operations productivity, based on suppression difficulty and cost, as well as records from documented fire suppression operation plans from prior fires. On the other side, the value of natural forest resources and the damage and losses from forest fires assessing, help to determining the change net value to estimate the economics fire impacts. For the efficiency analysis of the fire program, is possible using the VISUAL-SEVEIF (Spanish acronym for System for the Economic Evaluation of Wildfires) software tool, to obtain the knowledge of fire behavior and its direct effect on the depreciation of natural resources value, providing the total costs of the losses in the area affected by the wildfire, and the value of the losses for each of the resources identified within the fire perimeter. This tool work showing both in real time, simulating the spatial development of ground and canopy fires, and the economic losses. The spatial resolution of work will be conditioned by quality and accuracy of fuel model mapping, as well as the characteristics of the digital terrain model, so that in high-precision models the results of the fire behavior dynamic can be up to a square meter. The information layers required by the tool includes one that incorporates the characterization of the natural resources that exist in the area being analyzed and allows determining the economic value of these resources. The import and export possibilities of geo-referenced perimeters, in both vector and raster formats, allows easy transfer of the information generated to geographic information systems (GIS). VISUAL-SEVEIF enables carrying out diagnostic studies of an area that are aimed at the prevention and strategic management of wildfire defense. This paper showing how using this methodology, is possible obtained the efficiency rate of fire suppression activities.