A Stochastic Integer Programming Model for Minimizing Cost in the Use of Rain Water Collectors for Firefighting

Abstract EN

In this paper we propose a stochastic integer programming optimization model to determine the optimal location and number of rain water collectors (RWCs) for forest firefighting.

The objective is to minimize expected total cost to control forest fires.

The model is tested using a real case and several additional realistic scenarios.

The impact on the solution of varying the limit on the number of RWCs, the RWC water capacity, the aircraft capacity, the water demands, and the aircraft operating cost is explored.

Some observations are that the objective value improves with larger RWCs and with the use of aircraft with greater capacity.