Basing Airtankers for Forest Fire Control in Ontario

James I. MacLellan and David L. Martell
Additional contact information
James I. MacLellan: University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
David L. Martell: University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Operations Research, 1996, vol. 44, issue 5, 677-686

Abstract: The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources (OMNR) operates a fleet of nine CL-215 airtankers for forest fire control. The aircraft are based at a small number of airports that serve as home bases, from which they are deployed to a larger set of airports that serve as initial attack bases for fire fighting operations each day. We helped regional fire managers derive subjective airtanker deployment rules that specified how many airtankers were to be deployed at each initial attack base each day. We then developed a mathematical programming model that was used to help identify a home-basing strategy that would minimize the average annual cost of satisfying daily airtanker deployment demands. Our analysis provided OMNR decision makers with valuable insight into airtanker management and was used to help decide where to base the OMNR airtankers for the 1993 and subsequent fire seasons.

Keywords: transportation; models; location; basing of aircraft; government; services; forest fire management; programming; linear; applications (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.44.5.677 (application/pdf)

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:inm:oropre:v:44:y:1996:i:5:p:677-686

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Operations Research from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().