On the economic value of weather forecasts in wildfire suppression mobilization decisions

1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. 1641-1649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara G. Brown ◽  
Allan H. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Weather Forecasts ◽  
A Value ◽  
Wildfire Suppression ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Forecast Quality

Decision analysis is used to model the rational use and estimate the economic value of weather forecasts in a specific decision-making situation relating to wildfire suppression mobilization. In this situation two fires in a national forest that differ only in timber type and location may require fire-suppression assistance from an adjacent national forest, depending on the weather conditions. The assistance available in the adjacent national forest consists of one 20-man hand crew and one bulldozer. Decisions regarding whether to request assistance and whether and where to deploy these suppression resources are assumed to be made on the basis of weather forecasts. Weather forecasts are found to be useful in this context because they enable the fire manager to select in an optimal manner the fire at which the suppression resources are likely to be most beneficial on each occasion. Specifically, state of the art forecasts have an expected economic value of almost $61 00 in this situation, and perfect information would have a value of approximately $16 600. Sensitivity analysis reveals that these results are quite sensitive to variations in fire outcome (i.e., numbers of acres burned). Improvements in forecast quality would lead to substantial increases in the economic value of weather forecasts in this two-fire situation.

The economic benefit of localised, short-term, wildfire-potential information

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (7) ◽  
pp. 974 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laine Christman ◽  
Kimberly Rollins
Keyword(s):  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Information Service ◽  
Risk Scenarios ◽  
The Us ◽  
Wildfire Suppression ◽  
Information Products ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Wildland Management ◽  
Us West

Wildfire-potential information products are designed to support decisions for prefire staging of movable wildfire suppression resources across geographic locations. We quantify the economic value of these information products by defining their value as the difference between two cases of expected fire-suppression expenditures: one in which daily information about spatial variation in wildfire-potential is used to move fire suppression resources throughout the season, and the other case in which daily information is not used and fire-suppression resources are staged in their home locations all season. We demonstrate the method by constructing a hypothetical wildland management unit calibrated to represent a region typical in the US West. The method uses estimated suppression costs and probabilities of significant fire, as provided by an information service, to estimate expected suppression costs. We analyse differences in expected suppression costs for a range of risk scenarios. Economic savings occur for the majority of risk scenarios. This approach can be used to evaluate investments in wildfire-potential information services, and for assessing the value of investing in new resources.

Relating Burning Index to Wildfire Workload Over Broad Geographic Areas

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 235 ◽  
Author(s):  
R Mees ◽  
R Chase
Keyword(s):  
Southern California ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Control Problems ◽  
Fire Control ◽  
Heavy Tailed Distributions ◽  
Heavy Tailed ◽  
Burning Index ◽  
The Right ◽  
In Fire

The burning index of the National Fire Danger Rating System is designed to measure potential fire workload over broad geographic areas that can be repre sented as being homogeneous with respect to fuel, topo graphic, and weather conditions. The utility of this index is confirmed by its relation to three measures of fire workload-number of fires, area burned, and number of personnel used in fire suppression for National Forests in southern California. The distributions of these mea sures over 15 years were skewed heavily to the right ("heavy-tailed distributions"). We selected the75 th, 90th, and 95th percentile values of each distribution at ten percentile values of the burning index to investigate and display the association between fire workload and the burning index. The results provide a distinct view of the direct relationship between wildfire workload and critical burning index values for the southern California area as a whole, and point to the potential value of this approach for anticipating fire control problems in other areas.

Evidence for the effect of homes on wildfire suppression costs

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 537 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia H. Gude ◽  
Kingsford Jones ◽  
Ray Rasker ◽  
Mark C. Greenwood
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Nevada ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Active Fire ◽  
Confounding Variables ◽  
Unit Increase ◽  
Wildfire Suppression ◽  
In Fire ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Expected Increase

This paper uses wildfires in the Sierra Nevada area of California to estimate the relationship between housing and fire suppression costs. We investigated whether the presence of homes was associated with increased costs of firefighting after controlling for the effects of potential confounding variables including fire size, weather, terrain and human factors such as road access. This paper investigates wildfires in a way that other published studies have not; we analysed costs at the daily level, retaining information that would have been lost had we aggregated the data. We used linear mixed models to estimate the effects of homes on daily costs while incorporating within-fire variation. We conclude that the expected increase in the log daily cost with each unit increase in the log count of homes within 6 miles (~9.7 km) of an active fire is 0.07 (P = 0.005). The findings of this study are in agreement with most other previous empirical studies that have investigated the relationship between fire suppression costs and housing using cumulative fire costs and more generalised data on home locations. The study adds to mounting evidence that increases in housing lead to increases in fire suppression costs.

CNN-based Rain Reduction in Street View Images

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-81
Author(s):  
Simone Zini ◽  
Simone Bianco ◽  
Raimondo Schettini
Keyword(s):  
Character Recognition ◽  
Optical Character Recognition ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Specific Interest ◽  
Optical Character ◽  
Street View ◽  
In The Wild ◽  
Bad Weather ◽  
Detection And Recognition

Rain removal from pictures taken under bad weather conditions is a challenging task that aims to improve the overall quality and visibility of a scene. The enhanced images usually constitute the input for subsequent Computer Vision tasks such as detection and classification. In this paper, we present a Convolutional Neural Network, based on the Pix2Pix model, for rain streaks removal from images, with specific interest in evaluating the results of the processing operation with respect to the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) task. In particular, we present a way to generate a rainy version of the Street View Text Dataset (R-SVTD) for "text detection and recognition" evaluation in bad weather conditions. Experimental results on this dataset show that our model is able to outperform the state of the art in terms of two commonly used image quality metrics, and that it is capable to improve the performances of an OCR model to detect and recognise text in the wild.

PERSONALIZED APPROACH TO THE ORGANIZATION OF MEDICAL CARE FOR PATIENTS WITH WEATHER DEPENDENCE

2020 ◽  
pp. 35-39
Author(s):  
Klepikov O.V. ◽  
Kolyagina N.M. ◽  
Berezhnova T.A. ◽  
Kulintsova Ya.V.
Keyword(s):  
Medical Care ◽  
Cardiovascular System ◽  
Performance Indicators ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Outpatient Clinics ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Pathological Effect ◽  
Weather Forecasts ◽  
Personalized Approach

Relevance. Today, in preventive medicine, climatic conditions that have a pathological effect on the functional state of a person are increasingly being updated. the occurrence of exacerbations of many diseases can be causally associated with various weather conditions. Aim: to develop the main tasks for improving the organization of medical care for weather-dependent patients with diseases of the cardiovascular system. Material and methods. The assessment of personnel, material and technical support and the main performance indicators of an outpatient clinic was carried out on the example of the Voronezh city polyclinic No. 18 to develop the main tasks for improving the organization of medical care for weather-dependent patients with diseases of the cardiovascular system. Results. The main personnel problem is the low staffing of district therapists and specialists of a narrow service. One of the priorities for reducing the burden on medical hospitals is the organization of inpatient replacement medical care on the basis of outpatient clinics. The indicators for the implementation of state guarantees for the outpatient network for 2018, which were fully implemented, are given. The analysis of the planned load performance by polyclinic specialists is presented. Cardiological and neurological services carry out measures to reduce the risk of exacerbations of diseases with cerebral atherosclerosis, hypertension, and major neurological nosologies. Conclusion. Improving the organization of medical care for weather-dependent patients with cardiovascular diseases are: informing patients about the sources of specialized medical weather forecasts in the region, organizing the work of the medical prevention office, implementing an interdepartmental approach to providing health care to the most vulnerable groups of the population.

'A town built on migration?' Calculating the human capital value of migration to Reading, 1851-1871

2019 ◽  
pp. 26-54
Author(s):  
Daniel James Gooch
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Infrastructure Projects ◽  
Economic Output ◽  
Net Migration ◽  
A Value ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Town ◽  
Age And Sex ◽  
Capital Value

This article provides an estimate of the human capital value of migration to Reading in the period 1851-1871 to the town's economy. This is determined by estimating total net migration to the town across this period by age and sex and assigning all migrants a value for expected lifetime economic output less expected lifetime consumption costs. The final figures are contextualised by comparison with the value of social overhead capital used to fund significant local infrastructure projects in the same time period and show that, from a human capital perspective, the value of migration to Reading was very significant. This article thus addresses significant historiographical gaps in the study of Victorian labour migration to southern provincial towns and provides an original perspective to studies of the economic value of migration and its role in the growth of such communities.

scholarly journals AnANN Model Trained on Regional Data in the Prediction of Particular Weather Conditions

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 4757
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Bączkiewicz ◽  
Jarosław Wątróbski ◽  
Wojciech Sałabun ◽  
Joanna Kołodziejczyk
Keyword(s):  
Atmospheric Pressure ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Real Data ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Maximum Temperature ◽  
Air Masses ◽  
Weather Forecasts ◽  
Life Problems ◽  
The World ◽  
The City

Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have proven to be a powerful tool for solving a wide variety of real-life problems. The possibility of using them for forecasting phenomena occurring in nature, especially weather indicators, has been widely discussed. However, the various areas of the world differ in terms of their difficulty and ability in preparing accurate weather forecasts. Poland lies in a zone with a moderate transition climate, which is characterized by seasonality and the inflow of many types of air masses from different directions, which, combined with the compound terrain, causes climate variability and makes it difficult to accurately predict the weather. For this reason, it is necessary to adapt the model to the prediction of weather conditions and verify its effectiveness on real data. The principal aim of this study is to present the use of a regressive model based on a unidirectional multilayer neural network, also called a Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), to predict selected weather indicators for the city of Szczecin in Poland. The forecast of the model we implemented was effective in determining the daily parameters at 96% compliance with the actual measurements for the prediction of the minimum and maximum temperature for the next day and 83.27% for the prediction of atmospheric pressure.

scholarly journals Assessing the value of household work based on wages demanded on online platforms for substitutes

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona Jokubauskaitė ◽  
Alyssa Schneebaum
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Time Use ◽  
Opportunity Cost ◽  
Wage Rate ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Household Work ◽  
Improved Method ◽  
A Value ◽  
Online Platforms ◽  
Time Use Survey

AbstractWe propose an improved method to assess the economic value of unpaid housework and childcare. Existing literature has typically assigned a minimum, generalist or specialist’s wage, or the performer’s opportunity cost to the hourly value of these activities. Then it was used to calculate macro-level value based on the number of hours spent in this work. In this paper, instead of imputing an average or minimum wage for housework and childcare to determine a value to the work, we use the actual local wage rate requested for these services from providers on online platforms. Applying this method to Austrian Time Use Survey data shows that the value of unpaid childcare and housework, had it been paid, would be equivalent to about 22% of the 2018 GDP.

scholarly journals Assigning a Value to Volunteering in Requests for Proposals

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110095
Author(s):  
Jakub Dostál
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
European Economic Area ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
A Value ◽  
Economic Area ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Volunteer Time

The economic value of volunteering is an increasingly important part of volunteering management. It has become part of public policies. Some requests for proposals (RFP) enable nonprofits to include the value of volunteer time in compulsory co-financing. These RFP include the European Economic Area (EEA) Grants and Norway Grants. This article addresses the relationship in the value of volunteering, also called in-kind volunteering contributions. The research includes two case studies of finances from EEA and Norway Grants in the Czech Republic: the Czech NGO Programme, responsible for allocating grants between 2009 and 2014, and the Active Citizens Fund, responsible for allocating grants between 2014 and 2021. They share elements through the EEA and Norway Grants rules. However, they use different types of specialist replacement wages. The article summarizes the arguments for including in-kind volunteering contributions. It presents the possible values of these contributions in the selected cases, including the relationship between the type of volunteering and the number of hours necessary to achieve these values. The article defines the theoretical basis for calculating the value of in-kind volunteer contributions and illustrates this with real examples of allocations from EEA and Norway Grants.

scholarly journals Advanced Flight Planning and the Benefit of In-Flight Aircraft Trajectory Optimization

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1383
Author(s):  
Judith Rosenow ◽  
Martin Lindner ◽  
Joachim Scheiderer
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Traffic Control ◽  
Traffic Management ◽  
Trajectory Optimization ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
Air Traffic ◽  
Weather Data ◽  
Weather Forecasts ◽  
Aircraft Trajectory

The implementation of Trajectory-Based Operations, invented by the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research program SESAR, enables airlines to fly along optimized waypoint-less trajectories and accordingly to significantly increase the sustainability of the air transport system in a business with increasing environmental awareness. However, unsteady weather conditions and uncertain weather forecasts might induce the necessity to re-optimize the trajectory during the flight. By considering a re-optimization of the trajectory during the flight they further support air traffic control towards achieving precise air traffic flow management and, in consequence, an increase in airspace and airport capacity. However, the re-optimization leads to an increase in the operator and controller’s task loads which must be balanced with the benefit of the re-optimization. From this follows that operators need a decision support under which circumstances and how often a trajectory re-optimization should be carried out. Local numerical weather service providers issue hourly weather forecasts for the coming hour. Such weather data sets covering three months were used to re-optimize a daily A320 flight from Seattle to New York every hour and to calculate the effects of this re-optimization on fuel consumption and deviation from the filed path. Therefore, a simulation-based trajectory optimization tool was used. Fuel savings between 0.5% and 7% per flight were achieved despite minor differences in wind speed between two consecutive weather forecasts in the order of 0.5 m s−1. The calculated lateral deviations from the filed path within 1 nautical mile were always very small. Thus, the method could be easily implemented in current flight operations. The developed performance indicators could help operators to evaluate the re-optimization and to initiate its activation as a new flight plan accordingly.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document