Economic Evaluation of Prescribed Fire as a Wildfire Risk Mitigation Tool in Southeast Queensland
Creators: name: Eliott, Martyn
Publisher: name: University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: avoided loss
subject: burn frequency
subject: burn probability
subject: bushfire
subject: bushfire simulation
subject: controlled burn
subject: cost estimation
subject: damage thresholds
subject: ecological burn
subject: expected loss
subject: fire mapping
subject: fire simulator
subject: fireline intensity
subject: wildfire
subject: WUI
subject: Econometrics
subject: FOS: Economics and business
subject: Environmental management

description: Managing landscapes where wildfire occurs is a complex issue, particularly while protecting human values and the natural environment and limiting costs of risk mitigation activities. Recent advances in fire behaviour modelling have made it possible to quantify the likelihood, consequence, and risk of fire. The risk from wildfire requires management in the most efficient way possible, assisting in the reduction of impacts on humans and their valued assets. Prescribed fire is a risk mitigation technique adapted from the historic burning practices of indigenous peoples on most continents and humans’ current knowledge of ecological processes involving fire in ecosystems. Purposely burning vegetation is a technique used today by fire practitioners to reduce the vegetations related fuel and the risk of wildfire. Vegetation fuel load is the only variable that fire practitioners can actively manage to reduce the expected losses due to wildfire. Consequently, the most cost-effective risk mitigation strategies that include prescribed fire programs are currently required that reduce the risk of wildfire to valued assets.
description: To guide economically efficient wildfire risk mitigation activities, a decision support tool needs to account for the costs of risk mitigation, avoided wildfire suppression costs, avoided wildfire damage to market and non-market assets, and positive or negative ecological and social impacts of risk mitigation. This research aimed to investigate whether prescribed fire is an efficient wildfire risk mitigation tool. To achieve this aim, the research objectives were: (1) review wildfire management policies and procedures to determine wildfire management priorities; (2) develop a prescribed fire cost model; (3) estimate values for a set of assets at risk of being damaged or destroyed by wildfire; (4) estimate the effects of wildfire and prescribed fire on market and non-market assets at risk; (5) design wildfire risk mitigation scenarios using prescribed fire to estimate the effect of wildfire on assets at risk; (6) Use the fire simulator (Phoenix RapidFire) to estimate wildfire burn probabilities on the landscape with and without prescribed fire; and (7) estimate the temporally and geospatially efficient application of prescribed fire on the landscape, by comparing expected benefits of prescribed fire against expected costs of prescribed fire. By achieving these objectives, we developed a strategic approach to investigate the cost-effectiveness of prescribed fire at reducing risk of damage or destruction by wildfire for a set of valued assets.