Contribution of suppression difficulty and lessons learned in forecasting fire suppression operations productivity: A methodological approach

We propose an economic analysis using utility and productivity, and efficiency theories to provide fire managers a decision support tool to determine the most efficient fire management programs levels. By incorporating managers’ accumulated fire suppression experiences (capitalized experience) in the analysis we help fire managers determine fire suppression productivity and efficient budget allocation. Furthermore, monitoring of the management index (MI) helps identify operational deficiencies in the different districts where the analysis is applied. This is so because internally the area contraction factor (ACF) provides information regarding the effectiveness of fire suppression operations by including a comparison ratio between the area affected and the potential fire area without suppression actions. We used the Almonaster fire that occurred in 2008 in the Huelva Province, Spain as a case study to test the applicability of the methodology. Our evaluation showed that the combinations of firefighting resources assigned to the Almonaster fire resulted in a fire suppression efficiency of only 33%, measured as the ratio between damages avoided and suppression costs involved.