Development of a Decision Support Model for Establishing Response Strategies to Large-scale Wildfires Using GIS

Abstract

Every year, wildfire disasters of various scales occur in Korea, causing damage to forests, facilities, and human lives owing to the difficulties in early suppression. Effective wildfire response requires collaboration between multiple agencies, necessitating a decision support system for strategy formulation. However, while there is active research on technology development related to situation prediction and suppression equipment, discussions on response technologies and strategies are insufficient. In this study, we propose a GIS-based decision-making methodology for establishing initial response strategies through prioritization of suppression zones during wildfires. A case study on past wildfires was conducted to evaluate the applicability of the proposed methodology. The methodology suggested in this study integrates wildfire suppression elements using the equal weight method to derive suppression priority scores by combining these elements with the distance to wildfire occurrence points. In this study, we aim to provide a decision-making foundation that considers spatial factors in initial wildfire responses, which can serve as a crucial basis for effective allocation of firefighting resources and strategy formulation in the field.