Fighting Flames and Forging Firelines: Wildfire Suppression Effectiveness at the Fire Edge

Plucinski, Matt P.

doi:10.1007/s40725-019-00084-5

Cited by 51 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 108 publications

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“…The development of an index that tracks well with observed fire activity, and the technical capacity to forecast and map episodes of severe fire danger, together form the foundation of an operational, early-warning system targeted at improving wildland firefighter situational awareness and safety. At a minimum, increased fire behavior may postpone containment opportunities [47,48], but under worst-case scenarios, rapid and unexpected accelerations towards extreme fire behavior can lead to wildland firefighter entrapments [49]. To directly evaluate the capacity of the SFDI to indicate life-threatening fire environments, a wildland firefighter entrapment database [49] containing 178 events between 1979-2017 was intersected with the fire danger climatology.…”

Section: Comparing Sfdi To Firefighter Entrapment and Fatality Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Severe Fire Danger Index: A Forecastable Metric to Inform Firefighter and Community Wildfire Risk Management

Jolly

Freeborn

Page

et al. 2019

Fire

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Despite major advances in numerical weather prediction, few resources exist to forecast wildland fire danger conditions to support operational fire management decisions and community early-warning systems. Here we present the development and evaluation of a spatial fire danger index that can be used to assess historical events, forecast extreme fire danger, and communicate those conditions to both firefighters and the public. It uses two United States National Fire Danger Rating System indices that are related to fire intensity and spread potential. These indices are normalized, combined, and categorized based on a 39-yr climatology (1979–2017) to produce a single, categorical metric called the Severe Fire Danger Index (SFDI) that has five classes; Low, Moderate, High, Very High, and Severe. We evaluate the SFDI against the number of newly reported wildfires and total area burned from agency fire reports (1992–2017) as well as daily remotely sensed numbers of active fire pixels and total daily fire radiative power for large fires (2003–2016) from the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) across the conterminous United States. We show that the SFDI adequately captures geographic and seasonal variations of fire activity and intensity, where 58% of the eventual area burned reported by agency fire records, 75.2% of all MODIS active large fire pixels, and 81.2% of all fire radiative power occurred when the SFDI was either Very High or Severe (above the 90th percentile). We further show that SFDI is a strong predictor of firefighter fatalities, where 97 of 129 (75.2%) burnover deaths from 1979 to 2017 occurred when SFDI was either Very High or Severe. Finally, we present an operational system that uses short-term, numerical weather predictions to produce daily SFDI forecasts and show that 76.2% of all satellite active fire detections during the first 48 h following the ignition of nine high-profile case study fires in 2017 and 2018 occurred under Very High or Severe SFDI conditions. The case studies indicate that the extreme weather events that caused tremendous damage and loss of life could be mapped ahead of time, which would allow both wildland fire managers and vulnerable communities additional time to prepare for potentially dangerous conditions. Ultimately, this simple metric can provide critical decision support information to wildland firefighters and fire-prone communities and could form the basis of an early-warning system that can improve situational awareness and potentially save lives.

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Section: Comparing Sfdi To Firefighter Entrapment and Fatality Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Severe Fire Danger Index: A Forecastable Metric to Inform Firefighter and Community Wildfire Risk Management

Jolly

Freeborn

Page

et al. 2019

Fire

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“…Although fire suppression techniques have improved from 1990 to 2019, fire suppression costs have increased as reported in this and other studies [27][28][29]49]. However, increase fire suppression efficiency has not been demonstrated in part due to the generalized decision to send more and more fire suppression resources to fires without knowledge of the resources' efficiency [50,51]. This practice is more evident in high-intensity large wildfires increasing fire suppression costs without a corresponding increase in suppression activities efficiency.…”

Section: Scenariosmentioning

confidence: 83%

Potential Effects of Climate Change on Fire Behavior, Economic Susceptibility and Suppression Costs in Mediterranean Ecosystems: Córdoba Province, Spain

Molina

González-Cabán

Silva

2019

Forests

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The potentially large ecological, economic, and societal impacts of climate change makes it a significant problem of the 21st century. These consequences have led to tremendous development in climate change scenarios and new technologies to increase knowledge on the effect and efficiency of mitigation and adaptation measures. Large fires will occur at a higher rate than currently because of lower fuel moisture content resulting in a lower resistance to burning. This is also evidenced by more extreme fire behavior that contributes to higher economic impacts, suppression difficulties and suppression costs. The economic susceptibility concept integrates a set of economic valuation approaches for valuing timber and non-timber resources, considering the fire behavior, and as a consequence, the net value changes for each resource. Flame length increased by 4.6% to 15.69%, according to the different future climate scenarios. Climate change is expected to cause widespread changes to economic susceptibility and suppression costs because of higher flame length and fire intensity. Therefore, our outcomes show an increase in the economic susceptibility of Córdoba Province in the medium and long term (2041-2070) between 6.05% and 25.99%, respectively. In addition, we have found an increase between 65.67% and 86.73% in suppression costs in the last decade. The digital version of the economic susceptibility model using Geographic Information Systems improves its operational capabilities enhancing also its dynamism and simplicity to accept modifications and predictions revisions.

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“…For example, one of the key data requirements in building suppression models is the productivity of suppression resources along potential fire containment lines. Line construction productivity varies by crew type and capacity, topography, vegetation, accessibility, weather and fire intensity situations [53]. As suppression decisions can be highly sensitive to the rates of fireline production [54,55], it would be necessary to collect verified, locally specific empirical suppression data to more accurately parameterize decision support models [56].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing Operationally Relevant Daily Large Fire Containment Strategies Using Risk Assessment Results

Wei

Thompson

Scott³

et al. 2019

Forests

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In this study, we aim to advance the optimization of daily large fire containment strategies for ground-based suppression resources by leveraging fire risk assessment results commonly used by fire managers in the western USA. We begin from an existing decision framework that spatially overlays fire risk assessment results with pre-identified potential wildland fire operational delineations (PODs), and then clusters PODs into a response POD (rPOD) using a mixed integer program (MIP) model to minimize expected loss. We improve and expand upon this decision framework through enhanced fire modeling integration and refined analysis of probabilistic and time-sensitive information. Specifically, we expand the set of data inputs to include raster layers of simulated burn probability, flame length probability, fire arrival time, and expected net value change, all calculated using a common set of stochastic weather forecasts and landscape data. Furthermore, we develop a secondary optimization model that, for a given optimal rPOD, dictates the timing of fire line construction activities to ensure completion of containment line prior to fire arrival along specific rPOD edges. The set of management decisions considered includes assignment of PODs to be included in the rPOD, assignment of suppression resources to protect susceptible structures within the rPOD, and assignment of suppression resources to construct fire lines, on specific days, along the perimeter of the rPOD. We explore how fire manager risk preferences regarding firefighter safety affect optimal rPOD characteristics, and use a simple decision tree to display multiple solutions and support rapid assessment of alternatives. We base our test cases on the FSPro simulation of the 2017 Sliderock Fire that burned on the Lolo National Forest in Montana, USA. The overarching goal of this research is to generate operationally relevant decision support that can best balance the benefits and losses from wildfire and the cost from responding to wildfire.

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Fighting Flames and Forging Firelines: Wildfire Suppression Effectiveness at the Fire Edge

Cited by 51 publications

References 108 publications

Severe Fire Danger Index: A Forecastable Metric to Inform Firefighter and Community Wildfire Risk Management

Severe Fire Danger Index: A Forecastable Metric to Inform Firefighter and Community Wildfire Risk Management

Potential Effects of Climate Change on Fire Behavior, Economic Susceptibility and Suppression Costs in Mediterranean Ecosystems: Córdoba Province, Spain

Designing Operationally Relevant Daily Large Fire Containment Strategies Using Risk Assessment Results

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