Model Perspective

Jul 13, 2022 · Operations

Optimizing Firefighter Deployment to Minimize Forest Fire Costs

This article formulates a mathematical model to determine the optimal number of firefighters to dispatch after a forest fire, balancing reduced forest damage against rescue costs by incorporating variables such as fire spread speed, burn area, crew size, extinguishing speed, and both variable and fixed expenses, and solves for the crew size that minimizes total cost.