The influence of incident management teams on the deployment of wildfire suppression resources

Despite large commitments of personnel and equipment to wildfire suppression, relatively little is known about the factors that affect how many resources are ordered and assigned to wildfire incidents and the variation in resources across incident management teams (IMTs). Using detailed data on supp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of wildland fire Vol. 26; no. 7; pp. 615 - 629
Main Authors: Hand, Michael, Katuwal, Hari, Calkin, David E., Thompson, Matthew P.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Roslyn CSIRO 01.01.2017
Subjects:
California
Decision making
Expected utility
Expenditures
human resources
Influence
landscapes
Objectives
Preferences
Teams
Utility functions
Variation
Wildfires
United States > US
California
ISSN:1049-8001, 1448-5516
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Despite large commitments of personnel and equipment to wildfire suppression, relatively little is known about the factors that affect how many resources are ordered and assigned to wildfire incidents and the variation in resources across incident management teams (IMTs). Using detailed data on suppression resource assignments for IMTs managing the highest complexity wildfire incidents (Type 1 and Type 2), this paper examines daily suppression resource use and estimates the variation in resource use between IMTs. Results suggest that after controlling for fire and landscape characteristics, and for higher average resource use on fires in California, differences between IMTs account for ~14% of variation in resource use. Of the 89 IMTs that managed fires from 2007 to 2011, 17 teams exhibited daily resource capacity that was significantly higher than resource use for the median team.
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ISSN:1049-8001
1448-5516
DOI:10.1071/WF16126