Highlights

Thompson & Haas featured in the December, 2012 Science you can use Bulletin, for their work on wildland fire risk assessments

 

Fire Management Costs & Benefits

Managing wildland fires is an expensive activity, and public agencies devote significant portions of their budgets to fire management expenditures. Yet fire management involves tradeoffs. In many cases, protecting valuable assets or resources requires expenditures on suppression efforts.

The Fire Economics group seeks to better understand economic relationships between fire management, expenditures, and fire outcomes. This research area focuses on expenditures, other costs, and the benefits of suppression efforts, but also incorporates concepts from management decision making, risk management, and suppression effectiveness.

Key research questions currently being addressed are:

  1. What are the key factors influencing fire management costs?
  2. Which factors can be managed to reduce overall expenditures and improve cost-effectiveness of wildfire management?
  3. Can improved financial performance measures be brought to bear to assess contemporary fire management?
  4. Which types of data collection systems can best track the effectiveness of ground and aerial suppression resources? 

 

Related Publications

Thompson, Matthew P.; Calkin, David E.; Herynk, Jason; McHugh, Charles W.; Short, Karen C. 2012. Airtankers and wildfire management in the US Forest Service: examining data availability and exploring usage and cost trends. International Journal of Wildland Fire. doi: //dx.doi.org/10.1071/WF11041.

Calkin, Dave; Phipps, John; Holmes, Tom; Rieck, Jon; Thompson, Matt. 2011.The Exposure Index: Developing firefighter safety performance measures. Fire Management Today. 71(4): 24-27.

Wibbenmeyer, Matthew; Hand, Michael; Calkin, David. 2012. Preliminary results from a survey of U.S. Forest Service wildfire managers' attitudes toward aviation personnel exposure and risk. Res. Note RMRS-RN-50WWW. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 38 p.

Graham, Russell; Finney, Mark; McHugh, Chuck; Cohen, Jack; Calkin, Dave; Stratton, Rick; Bradshaw, Larry; Nikolov, Ned. 2012. Fourmile Canyon Fire Findings. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-289. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 110 p.

Venn, Tyron J.; Calkin, David E. 2011. Accommodating non-market values in evaluation of wildfire management in the United States: Challenges and opportunities. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 20(3): 327-339.

Stetler, Kyle M.; Venn, Tyron J.; Calkin, David E. 2010. The effects of wildfire and environmental amenities on property values in northwest Montana, USA. Ecological Economics. 69: 2233-2243.

Calkin, David; Gebert, Krista. 2009. Economics of wildland fire management. Advances in Fire Practices, Fall 2009. Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center. Online: //www.wildfirelessons.net/Printable.aspx?Page=Additional284.

Liang, Jingjing; Calkin, Dave E.; Gebert, Krista M.; Venn, Tyron J.; Silverstein, Robin P. 2008. Factors influencing large wildland fire suppression expenditures. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 17: 650-659.