Network theory applied to preparedness problems in wildfire management

Wildfires are a persistent threat for both people and the environment. These events are increasingly frequent and destructive and require effective responses that take into account multiple constrains and conflicting goals. In this paper, the problem of wildfire management is addressed focusing on preventing measures to avoid the uncontrolled spread of fire. Among them, fire-fighting lines are an effective way to stop fire from spreading beyond them. The Firebreak Location problem models the optimal positioning of fire-fighting lines within a territory with budget constrains while minimizing the risk that fires reaches valuable areas. Due to the hardness of the problem, heuristic approaches are applied to variations of the original problem. Fire spread can also be reduced up to a fixed limit applying fuelbreaks (strips of land in which the fuel load is reduced) and prescribed burning. These techniques are discussed in the Land Management problem that can be seen as a generalization of the Firebreak Location problem. For each of the problems above, theoretical and experimental results are presented.