Resource Sharing for Control of Wildland Fires

Wildland fires (or wildfires) occur on all continents except for Antarctica. These fires threaten communities, change ecosystems, destroy vast quantities of natural resources and the cost estimates of the damage done annually is in the billions of dollars. Controlling wildland fires is resource-inte...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main Authors: Tsang, Alan, Larson, Kate, McAlpine, Rob
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/8483
https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v27i1.8483
Description
Summary:Wildland fires (or wildfires) occur on all continents except for Antarctica. These fires threaten communities, change ecosystems, destroy vast quantities of natural resources and the cost estimates of the damage done annually is in the billions of dollars. Controlling wildland fires is resource-intensive and there are numerous examples where the resource demand has outstripped resource availability. Trends in changing climates, fire occurrence and the expansion of the wildland-urban interface all point to increased resource shortages in the future. One approach for coping with these shortages has been the sharing of resources across different wildland-fire agencies. This introduces new issues as agencies have to balance their own needs and risk-management with their desire to help fellow agencies in need. Using ideas from the field of multiagent systems, we conduct the first analysis of strategic issues arising in resource-sharing for wildland-fire control. We also argue that the wildland-fire domain has numerous features that make it attractive to researchers in artificial intelligence and computational sustainability.