Choice of Airport in Extinguishing Wildfires: Model and Cases

Louise Ekström, Christine Große

2020

Abstract

This paper develops a model to support the optimal choice of an airport as a base for the flying vehicles that are operated to extinguish wildfires and forest fires. Based on experiences from the two largest wildfires in Swedish history, this study models the optimisation as a balanced transportation problem. In both cases, the model selected the airport that is closest to the fire area. If the capacity of the chosen airport was insufficient to host all of the flying vehicles, then the model added a second airport which is also nearby the wildfire area. The cases demonstrate that the total cost of the operation is lower when the extinguishing work is concentrated in an area that has a short distance between the airport and the fire, the fuel depots and the pilots’ accommodation. Improved access to relevant data in the context of crisis management by air could allow for the inclusion of additional parameters and correct data in the optimisation model, which could in turn provide more comprehensive decision-making support.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Ekström L. and Große C. (2020). Choice of Airport in Extinguishing Wildfires: Model and Cases. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES, ISBN 978-989-758-396-4, pages 364-371. DOI: 10.5220/0009166703640371

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icores20,
author={Louise Ekström and Christine Große},
title={Choice of Airport in Extinguishing Wildfires: Model and Cases},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES,},
year={2020},
pages={364-371},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0009166703640371},
isbn={978-989-758-396-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems - Volume 1: ICORES,
TI - Choice of Airport in Extinguishing Wildfires: Model and Cases
SN - 978-989-758-396-4
AU - Ekström L.
AU - Große C.
PY - 2020
SP - 364
EP - 371
DO - 10.5220/0009166703640371