GIS-Based Determination of the Optimal Heliport and Water Source Locations for Forest Fire Suppression Using Multi-Objective Programming

Abstract

First responders to forest fires, especially in areas that cannot be reached by land, are carried out by helicopters. In large forest lands, the necessity of helicopters to reach fire areas in the shortest time reveals the importance of heliport locations. In this study, the set-covering problem is handled by optimizing heliport locations in a heavily forested Milas district of Muğla, Turkey, where forest fires have occurred severely in recent years. The aim is to cover the entire region with a minimum number of heliports within specified response times. The forest density of the relevant region is integrated as weights into the mathematical model based on geographic information systems (GIS) during location-allocation. In addition, several conditions related to the study area, such as their proximity to roads, distance to settlement areas, slope, wetlands, altitude, the existence of heliports or airports, and others, were defined on 2 × 2 km grids and analyzed in ArcGIS for use in mathematical modeling, which was developed as a multi-objective programming model. In the first model, different initial attack (IA) times are considered, and the tradeoffs between IA time coverages and heliport locations are revealed by using the ɛ constraint method. Then, in the second model, the water sources are evaluated to provide recommendations for further extended attack (EA) and additional water sources (pools) considering the existing ones. Mathematical modeling is used to determine Pareto optimal heliport and additional water source locations for both IA and EA in the forest fires, respectively. Finally, the potential savings of the proposed model are quantified by comparing the model results with the current locations of the helicopters and water sources based on historical fire data.

Location planning of forest wildfire initial attack teams: A case study of Aliağa-İzmir

“…Matematiksel modelin amaç fonksiyonu hem ilk müdahale hem de ve büyük yangınlara müdahale durumlarında havadan kapsanan alanların beklenen değerini maksimize etmektedir. Maraş et al (2023) Milas-Muğla bölgesinde heliportların yerlerini belirlemek için iki kapsama modeli geliştirmişlerdir. Bu modelleri kullanarak tüm orman sahasının kapsanması için gerekli minimum sayıda heliportun yerlerini belirlemişlerdir.…”

Optimal Collaborative Scheduling of Multi-Aircraft Types for Forest Fires General Aviation Rescue

“…This general aviation rescue issue has attracted widespread attention from domestic and foreign researchers, mainly focusing on the research on the location of emergency facilities [3], scheduling of emergency rescue resources, and optimization of rescue routes [4]. Scholars from various countries have conducted extensive research on scheduling emergency rescue resources in general aviation rescue.…”

A Novel Bat Algorithm with Asymmetrical Weighed Variational Method in the Path Planning of UAVs

“…Forest protection has made great progress, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being used in forest fire detection. UAVs have unique advantages in forest fire prevention and suppression, such as high temperature adaptation to the environment, detection of multiple physical features, high movement speed, monitoring of a large area, higher safety, and faster response to a task [15][16][17][18][19][20]. Therefore, a highly accurate navigation algorithm is one of the most important components of UAV deployment, where trajectory planning has become the core issue.…”