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Abstract
Rekindles and false alarms are unusually high in the Portuguese wildfire management system, representing a high burden on suppression resources in particular, and fire management resources in general. In 20,049 occurrences that the suppression system handled in the summer of 2010, 12.5% were false alarms and 15.0% were rekindles. We present a discreteevent simulation model of a wildfire suppression system, designed to analyze the joint impact of primary fires, rekindles and false alarms on system performance. The work contributes to fill a research gap concerning that impact, and features a novel application of simulation to suppression systems, as screening tools to support more holistic analyses. The model was implemented in ®ARENA, and used for a study of a Portuguese district. We found that reducing false alarms and rekindles to benchmark values would significantly reduce pressure on firefighting teams, enabling more effective suppression operations.
Parent Publication
Citation
Pacheco, Abílio Pereira; Claro, João; Oliveira, Tiago. 2013. Simulation analysis of a wildfire suppression system. In: González-Cabán, Armando, tech. coord. Proceedings of the fourth international symposium on fire economics, planning, and policy: climate change and wildfires. Gen. Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-245 (English). Albany, CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station: 36-49.
