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Journal of the International Association of Wildland Fire
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Cost effectiveness of fire management strategies in southern Australia

T. D. Penman A B and B. A. Cirulis A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, University of Melbourne, Creswick Campus, Water Street, Creswick, Vic. 3363, Australia.

B Corresponding author. Email: trent.penman@unimelb.edu.au

International Journal of Wildland Fire 29(5) 427-439 https://doi.org/10.1071/WF18128
Submitted: 6 August 2018  Accepted: 19 November 2018   Published: 18 June 2019

Abstract

Fire-management agencies invest significant resources to reduce the impacts of future fires. There has been increasing public scrutiny over how agencies allocate fire-management budgets and, in response, agencies are looking to use quantitative risk-based approaches to make decisions about expenditure in a more transparent manner. Advances in fire-simulation software and computing capacity of fire-agency staff have meant that fire simulators have been increasingly used for quantitative fire-risk analysis. Here we analyse the cost trade-offs of future fire management in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and surrounding areas by combining fire simulation with Bayesian Decision Networks. We compare potential future-management approaches considering prescribed burning, suppression and fire exclusion. These data combined costs of treatment and impacts on assets to undertake a quantitative risk analysis. The proposed approach for fuel treatment in ACT and New South Wales (NSW) provided the greatest reduction in risk and the most cost-effective approach to managing fuels in this landscape. Past management decisions have reduced risk in the landscape and the legacy of these treatments will last for at least 3 years. However, an absence of burning will result in an increased risk from fire in this landscape.

Additional keywords: Bayesian Network, house loss, life loss, prescribed fire, risk.


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