Abstract: |
An algorithm is described that quickly calculates minimum travel times between locations for initial response forest fire suppression units. The algorithm was developed for integration into wildfire planning simulation models to quickly identify fire suppression units with the fastest response to a fire during a simulation. While generally quite fast, network-based path minimization algorithms are not suitable for the wildfire problem since fires are often located away from existing network features, such as roads and trails. On the other hand, traditional raster-based least-cost path algorithms can take minutes, if not hours, to calculate each resource’s travel time, too slow to be effective within a simulation model. The algorithm presented in this paper enhances the raster-based technology, providing a multi-resolution approach. Our test results show the new algorithm dramatically increases the speed of calculations with only limited loss of accuracy |
