Strategic and tactical planning to improve suppression efforts against large forest fires in the Catalonia region of Spain

José Ramón Gonzalez-Olabarria,Keith M Reynolds,Asier Larrañaga,Jordi Garcia-Gonzalo,Eduard Busquets,Miriam Pique

doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2018.09.039

Abstract

The study explores use of the Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) System to standardize the process of allocating Management Areas for Fire Suppression Support (MASSs) in Catalonia, Spain. MASSs are defined as those areas in the landscape that change fire behavior, reducing the magnitude of the wildfire, and improve significantly fire suppression effectiveness/capacity. Considerations for allocating MASSs include high likelihood of large fires in the vicinity, potential for spread, proximity of the location to valuable resources at risk, proximity to adequate water supply, accessibility by mechanized means, and fuel management opportunities. The combination of accessibility, water supply and fuel management opportunities, when allocating MAASs, provide the minimum requirements to allow fire suppression actions, while improving effectiveness and safety levels. For these purposes, we combine the newest data available, outputs from fire simulators and expert knowledge to define a problem that could be solved using EMDS within a participatory planning framework. To support the fire suppression mission of the firefighting service in Catalonia, this study uses a combination of strategic and tactical solutions, in which the strategic solution identifies high priority locations within the landscape for fire suppression activities, and tactical solutions identify high priority management activities within specific locations.

Highlights

Research on methods for preventing the negative impacts of large wildfires continues to be an important area in forest and land-use planning, fire suppression, and civil protection research
This study aims at improving suppression effectiveness through fuel management activities
Our approach considers fuel management, by prioritizing its allocation and by defining management actions to be implemented, as the core of the planning problem, but it does not reflect the typical approaches of previous studies

Summary

Introduction

Research on methods for preventing the negative impacts of large wildfires continues to be an important area in forest and land-use planning, fire suppression, and civil protection research. The problem is complex as it involves a myriad of aspects that should be taken into account, either from the point of view of predicting the occurrence and behavior of future forest fires, when assessing the value and level of risk of resources at stake, or when identifying the impact that management actions will have on mitigating both the occurrence of large fires and expected losses. Each of these aspects of the problem, individually, and in combination, are affected by several interconnected factors (Millar et al, 2007, Ryan and Opperman, 2013, Herawati et al, 2015). The latter studies rely on the accepted principle that, by modifying fuels across a landscape and controlling the behavior of fire, it will be possible to generate an increased number of opportunities for fire confinement when applying suppression measures

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