A theoretical economic model for choosing efficient wildfire suppression strategies

Isabel Mendes

Forest Policy and Economics, 2010, vol. 12, issue 5, 323-329

Abstract: In spite of increasing efforts by the authorities to qualitatively improve means of fire fighting, the wildfire scenario in Mediterranean regions has been worsening and one fears that this situation will only be further aggravated. Within a scenario of resource scarcity, huge budgetary constraints and other public choices of equivalent priority to that of combating wildfires, new wildfire management strategies seem necessary to achieve efficient answers to the increasing complexity of the economic and technical Mediterranean forest fire framework. In this paper, we seek to contribute towards clarifying how economic tools can be deployed to improve wildfire management and decrease fire risk within a context of economic scarcity and increasing forest fire risk. We describe how traditional microeconomic producer theory can be used to design a theoretical model enabling the choice of efficient wildfire suppression strategies. Along with linear programming techniques, GIS based data, and computer simulation programs, the efficient theoretical model enables those responsible to gain answers to some key questions arising throughout the course of wildfire process management, and particularly wildfire combat management.

Keywords: Forest; Fire; Economic; model; Efficient; suppression; strategies; Theory; of; the; producer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389-9341(10)00020-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:12:y:2010:i:5:p:323-329

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().