Strategic Planning and Budgeting of Wildland Fire Preparedness Programs for Risk Management

In approaches that were previously used, preparedness planning used tactical modelling of individual fire events and resource deployment. Results from modelling individual fire events were typically gathered to construct a program analysis at the planning unit or at the landscape level. This research deviates from those tactical-based approaches by using strategic modelling to inform planning and budgeting decisions for a preparedness program. In preparedness planning and budgeting, wildland fire officials must consider the dual importance of reducing wildfire risk to highly valued resources (initial attack) and managing for the beneficial effects of wildland fire that can foster resilient fire-adapted ecosystems. This dual purpose requires the employment of a similar set of resources including crews, equipment and planning. Consequently, we address the allocation of a single ‘preparedness’ budget to the dual purpose of initial attack and beneficial wildland fire (BWF) using return on investment (ROI) as the performance metric.