GENETIC ALGORITHM BASED SIMULATION-OPTIMIZATION FOR FIGHTING WILDFIRES.

Wildfire is one of the most significant disturbances responsible for reshaping the terrain and changing the ecosystem of a particular region. Its detrimental effects on environ-ment as well as human lives and properties, and growing trend in terms of frequency and intensity of wildfires over the last decade have necessitated the development of efficient forest fire management techniques. During the last three decades, Forest Fire Decision Support Systems (FFDSS) have been developed to help in the decision-making processes during forest fires by providing necessary information on fire detection, their status and behavior, and other aspects of forest fires. However, most of these decision support sys-tems lack the capability of developing intelligent fire suppression strategies based upon current status and predicted behavior of forest fire. This paper presents an approach for development of efficient fireline building strategies via intelligent resource allocation. A Genetic Algorithm based approach has been proposed in this paper for resource allo-cation and optimum fireline building that minimizes the total damage due to wildland fires. The approach is based on a simulation-optimization technique in which the Genetic Algorithm uses advanced forest fire propagation models based upon Huygens principles for evaluation of cost index of its solutions. Both homogeneous and heterogeneous envi-ronmental conditions have been considered. Uncertainties in weather conditions as well as imperfect knowledge about exact vegetation and topographical conditions make exact prediction of wildfires very difficult. The paper incorporates Monte-Carlo simulations to develop robust strategies in uncertain conditions. Extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in efficient resource allocation for fighting complex wildfires in uncertain and dynamic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]