VISUAL-SEVEIF, a tool for integrating fire behavior simulation and economic evaluation of the impact of Wildfires
| Authors: | Francisco Rodríguez y Silva, Juan Ramón Molina Martínez, Miguel Ángel Herrera Machuca, Jesús Mª Rodríguez Leal |
| Year: | 2013 |
| Type: | General Technical Report |
| Station: | Pacific Southwest Research Station |
| Source: | 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: 163-178 |
Abstract
Progress made in recent years in fire science, particularly as applied to forest fire protection, coupled with the increased power offered by mathematical processors integrated into computers, has led to important developments in the field of dynamic and static simulation of forest fires. Furthermore, and similarly, econometric models applied to economic evaluation of natural resources have generated algorithms of great scientific consistency that have allowed determining the monetary value of resources that have not traditionally had a commercial or market interaction treatment.
VISUAL-SEVEIF (Spanish acronym for System for the Economic Evaluation of Wildfires) is a software tool that allows working both in real time, simulating the spatial development of ground and canopy fires, and addressing the implementation of territorial studies by which possible fire evolutions are determined and characterized, subject to final spatial or temporal contour conditions. The spatial resolution of work will be conditioned by the 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. VISUAL-SEVEIF integrates knowledge of fire behavior and its direct effect on the depreciation of natural resources, providing the total value 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. 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.