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An optimization model for aggregation of prescribed burn units

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Abstract

Fire is a natural component of many terrestrial ecosystems; however, uncontrolled intense wildfires can cause loss of human life and destruction of natural resources. Prescribed burning is a management activity undertaken for the purposes of both wildfire hazard reduction and the preservation of fire-adapted ecosystems. Achievement of prescribed burn targets is made difficult by operational constraints such as limited personnel, equipment and suitable weather for undertaking burning. Prescribed burn program implementation may benefit from efficiencies gained in undertaking larger burns. Here, we present a mixed-integer programming formulation for aggregation of prescribed burn units. The model minimizes the total prescribed burn perimeter requiring management, by aggregating existing ‘fundamental’ burn units into larger compact and contiguous units or ‘clusters’. This problem is a special case of the ‘supervised regionalization’ or the ‘\(p\)-regions problem’. The model’s functionality is demonstrated on a test landscape and a number of extensions and implementation issues are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by funding from the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre in the form of scholarship funding to James Minas. We would like to thank Liam Fogarty, Tim Gazzard and Salahuddin Ahmad from the Department of Environment Primary Industries, Victoria for motivating the problem and providing the test dataset. This paper has benefitted greatly from the comments and suggestions of anonymous reviewers on an earlier version of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, N2L 3C5, Canada

    James P. Minas

  2. School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, 3001, Australia

    John W. Hearne

Authors
  1. James P. Minas
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  2. John W. Hearne
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Correspondence to James P. Minas.

Appendix

Appendix

See Appendix Table 3.

Table 3 Initial burn unit shared boundaries
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Minas, J.P., Hearne, J.W. An optimization model for aggregation of prescribed burn units. TOP 24, 180–195 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11750-015-0383-y

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