Work

Dynamic Resource Allocation in Disaster Response: Tradeoffs in Wildfire Suppression

Year: 2012

Type: article

Abstract: Challenges associated with the allocation of limited resources to mitigate the impact of natural disasters inspire fundamentally new theoretical questions for dynamic decision making in coupled human and natural systems. Wildfires are one of several types of disaster phenomena, including oil spills and disease epidemics, where (1) the disaster evolves on the same timescale as the response effort, and (2) delays in response can lead to increased disaster severity and thus greater demand for resources. We introduce a minimal stochastic process to represent wildfire progression that nonetheless accurately captures the heavy tailed statistical distribution of fire sizes observed in nature. We then couple this model for fire spread to a series of response models that isolate fundamental tradeoffs both in the strength and timing of response and also in division of limited resources across multiple competing suppression efforts. Using this framework, we compute optimal strategies for decision making scenarios that arise in fire response policy.

Source: PLoS ONE

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0033285

Authors: Nada Petrovic, David L. Alderson, Jean M. Carlson

Institutions: Columbia University, Naval Postgraduate School, University of California, Santa Barbara

Language: English

Topic: Facility Location and Emergency Management

Subfield: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,382

Funders: David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, Office of Naval Research