Assessing the economic trade-offs between prevention and suppression of forest fires

The number of large-scale, high-severity forest fires occurring in the United States is increasing, as is the cost to suppress these fires. We use a technique developed by William Reed to incorporate the stochasticity of the time of a forest fire into our optimal control problem. Using this optimal control problem, we explore the trade-offs between prevention management spending and suppression spending, along with the overall economic viability of prevention management spending. Our goal is to determine the optimal prevention management spending rate and the optimal suppression spending, which maximizes the expected value of a forest. We develop a parameter set reflecting the 2011 Las Conchas Fire and numerically solve our optimal control problem. Furthermore, we adapt this problem to simulate a sequence of fires and corresponding controls. Overall, our results support the conclusion that the prevention management efforts offset rising suppression costs and increase the value of a forest. Recommendations for Resource Managers Increasing wildfire size and increasing federal suppression costs have prompted investigations into alternative methods to help prevent and manage large wildfires. Fire prevention lowers the risk of experiencing large fire events, but investment in fire prevention is risky because its benefits are realized at an unknown time in the future. Results illustrate that there are real economic costs associated with using funding directed to fire prevention to fund immediate fire suppression. In our work with unknown fire sequences, we observe an 88% reduction in suppression spending on average with fire prevention, and a 55% reduction in spending overall.