Automated construction of ground access routes for the management of regional forest fires

Abstract

Modern geospatial technologies and permanently updated wildfire monitoring datasets are the basis of improving forest firefighting on different administrative scales. One of the tasks is to use the spatial representation of forest fire locations during the fire season and offer timely suitable technical options for accessing them. We developed a GIS technology to create forest fire ground access routes for special firefighting vehicles moving from a ground firefighting base (fire-chemical station) to the place of the forest fire detection; the technology includes a statistical and geospatial accessibility analysis of the routes. The key data are a transport model consisting of public roads and forest glades on the regional scale. We described the main principles of the transport model construction and usage, and their implementation for the Russian Federal Districts. An access routes database for the 2002–2019 fire seasons, a central part of the Siberian Federal District, was produced and analysed. By using a hot spot analysis, we confirmed that forest fires are poorly accessible away from the centre of the Siberian District. The created road accessibility maps show “a proposed ground access zone” within the key area to fight forest fires for the fire seasons to come.

Optimal Forest Road Density as Decision-Making Factor in Wood Extraction

“…At the same time, it is important to associate these distance classes with the costs of construction, maintenance, and the reconstruction of forest roads, and, consequently, with the optimal forest road density (ORD), in order to provide efficiency for harvesting and wood transport operations [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. Forest roads can also work as firebreaks for fire prevention and control, in addition to helping create better access for firefighters to the place in question [33,34].…”

Local wisdom as basic material for drafting local government regulations

“…In addition, forest fires in Kalimantan occur due to land clearing and forest conservation into irresponsible plantations. Thus, forest fires are a severe problem in Indonesia, especially during the dry season (Podolskaia et al, 2020).…”

Analysis of infrastructural forest data with GIS-tools

“…Forest roads standards play an important role in the forest management, there is an example for the accessing of forest fires in Turkey (Akay et al, 2021) in our collaborative projects. From the methodological point of view we have moved from the accessibility analysis of forest fires (Podolskaia et al, 2019;Podolskaia et al, 2020b) to the analysis of forest resources' spatial location (Podolskaia et al, 2020c). By analyzing actual forest resources' accessibility, which takes into account types and conditions of roads, time and traffic speed, length of ground routes, as well as location of fire stations and settlements we propose some forest management solutions or scenarios at the regional scale of Russia.…”