Selecting locations for forest fuel treatments using simulation optimization

Abstract

Wildfires in the Canadian boreal forest poses a considerable threat to forest inventory, structures and human lives. Traditional reactive methods of fire suppression fail to mitigate this threat and can worsen the problem by causing unnatural fuel buildup. Fuel management, carried out through the application of fuel treatments across a landscape, is a proactive approach to fire hazard reduction which has the potential to decrease fire risk significantly. The problem of selecting the location of fuel treatments is complicated by the uncertainty of predicting when and where fire events will occur.