@article {bnh-6854, title = {Cost effectiveness of fire management strategies in southern Australia}, journal = {International Journal of Wildland Fire}, volume = {29}, year = {2019}, month = {06/2019}, pages = {427-439}, 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.
}, keywords = {Bayesian Network, house loss, life loss, prescribed fire, risk}, doi = { https://doi.org/10.1071/WF18128}, url = {https://www.publish.csiro.au/WF/WF18128}, author = {Trent Penman and Brett Cirulis} }