An Indicator for Assessing the Effectiveness of Organizing Forest Fire Protection

Abstract

The article briefly analyzes the main indicators used to assess the effectiveness of the organization of forest fire protection in the Russian Federation. The need to improve approaches to such an assessment has been substantiated. Based on the expert analysis of various situations and existing operational indicators of aviation forest protection units and regional dispatching services, it can be concluded that all possible factors that affect the effectiveness of work should be divided into two groups: organizational and weather-related. At the same time, all organizational factors ultimately affect the area covered by the fire. Weather factors cannot be controlled, and their influence must be excluded when calculating performance indicators. Thus, all indicators that characterize the weather factor are directly or indirectly related. The article proves the expediency of using the indicator of fire season intensity to account for weather factors. It is proposed to calculate the relative deviation of the values of forest fire frequency and intensity from the average long-term values for assessing the effectiveness. The article provides a formula, an algorithm, and a number of recommendations for automating the calculation. A verbal-numerical scale of conditional assessment of the effectiveness of forest firefighting units is proposed. The interpretation of the values of the conditional indicator of the effectiveness of forest firefighting units for the selected scale is given. On the basis of the proposed method, an analysis of the effectiveness assessment of organizing forest fire protection in 2019 for all constituent entities of the Russian Federation is carried out. In the framework of the existing accounting system of forest fires, the cost of their suppression, as well as the features of existing system of account of funding of activities related to the protection of forests from fires, the proposed approach is optimal for assessing the forest fire service as it considers previous work experience in a variety of weather conditions. The proposed approach can be used in systems to support management decisions in the field of forest fire protection, which will significantly increase the adequacy of management decisions in the forest sector.