The effectiveness of suppression resources in large fire management in the US: a review

Abstract

Wildfire management currently represents nearly 50 percent of the US Forest Service’s total budget. In both 2012 and 2013 large fire suppression exceeded the Agency’s budget allocations by over $400 million (US$). Despite the scale of this investment relatively little is understood about how suppression actions influence large wildfire spread and those conditions that ultimately lead to containment. There is considerable uncertainty in managing large wildfires including the quality of weather forecasts, complex environmental conditions, variation in the type and quality of suppression resources, and whether or not requested suppression resources will be assigned. In this presentation we review several recent studies that attempt to understand how suppression actions influence fire progression of large wildland fires in the US. Finney et al. (2009) who established the critical importance of quiescent fire growth periods in achieving final fire containment. Holmes and Calkin (2013) used econometric analyses including Cobb-Douglas production functions and production possibility frontiers to examine the effect of different suppression resources and fire characteristics on daily reported fire containment. We extend the Holmes and Calkin (2013) analysis by focusing on geospatially delineated fire progression maps to identify how suppression resources and fire characteristics influenced the amount of fire perimeter that held on a given day. Additionally we review a small sample of large fires where field based data collection allows us to better understand the types of mission and relative efficiency and effectiveness of field based crews. Despite these recent efforts, there remains limited understanding of suppression effectiveness. These results suggest that modelling large fire containment as a production process of fireline construction similar to traditional initial attack models is inappropriate. Improved understanding of large fire management effectiveness and efficiency will require spatially tracking individual resource assignments, activities, and tactics within the broader suite of fire management objectives and strategies.