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International Journal of Wildland Fire International Journal of Wildland Fire Society
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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