A theoretical economic model for choosing efficient wildfire suppression strategies

In spite of increasing efforts by the authorities to qualitatively improve means of fire fighting, the wildfire scenario in Mediterranean regions has been worsening and one fears that this situation will only be further aggravated. Within a scenario of resource scarcity, huge budgetary constraints and other public choices of equivalent priority to that of combating wildfires, new wildfire management strategies seem necessary to achieve efficient answers to the increasing complexity of the economic and technical Mediterranean forest fire framework. In this paper, we seek to contribute towards clarifying how economic tools can be deployed to improve wildfire management and decrease fire risk within a context of economic scarcity and increasing forest fire risk. We describe how traditional microeconomic producer theory can be used to design a theoretical model enabling the choice of efficient wildfire suppression strategies. Along with linear programming techniques, GIS based data, and computer simulation programs, the efficient theoretical model enables those responsible to gain answers to some key questions arising throughout the course of wildfire process management, and particularly wildfire combat management.