Modelling Forest Fire Initial Attack Airtanker Operations

The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources uses airtankers for forest fire suppression that now have onboard GPS units that track their real-time location, velocity and altitude. However, the GPS data does not indicate which fire is being fought, the time each airtanker spends travelling to and from each fire or the time each airtanker spends flying between each fire and the lake from which it scoops water to drop on the fire. A pattern recognition algorithm was developed and used to determine what was happening at each point along the airtanker’s track, including the time and location of every water pickup. This pre-processed data was used to develop detailed models of the airtanker service process. A discrete-event simulation model of the initial attack airtanker system was also developed and used to show how service process models can be incorporated in other models to help solve complex airtanker management decision-making problems.