Economic decision making under uncertainty for wildfire fuels mitigation
department or school: Forestry, Faculty of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Scorah, Hugh William
issued: 2022-05-09T15:44:29Z
issued: 2022
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: Increases in wildfire suppression cost expenditures, an upward trend in burned area, increasing damages and evacuations, along with research pointing to a worsening trend in all of these areas as a result of climate change is motivating research into methods to limit the consequences of wildfire. My research is chiefly concerned with the use of economic tools to identify the best use of resources when evaluating fuel mitigation efforts both from a project perspective and at the landscape level. Using tools from Extreme Value Theory, I show that the distribution of wildfire costs is not likely to follow a normal distribution and instead is more likely drawn from fat-tailed distributions. This distribution implies that conventional tools of economic analysis, in particular, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis are not applicable and, if economic tools are to be applied, alternative approaches need to be developed. I present an alternative approach for analyzing individual projects, modeled after banking stress-tests, and apply it to four fuel-treatment case studies in the interior of British Columbia. This approach, called the Defensibility Heuristic, makes use of frontline experience (tacit knowledge), has few data and modeling requirements, and has the potential to quickly rank projects within a government budget and planning cycle that are most likely to protect the most important values. Following the development of this approach for picking fuel treatments in the short run, a tool for making decisions about longer-term forest management concerned with wildfire management is considered. This tool is community-centric as opposed to taking a provincial or federal perspective. Different approaches to ranking outcomes from decision theory were considered in the face of wildfire events that were drawn from a Power Law distribution. The existing decision rules were found wanting and I developed a rule called a Trauma Exposure. This decision rule was applied to t…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/81473
note: ECONOMIC DECISION MAKING UNDER UNCERTAINTY FOR WILDFIRE FUELS MITIGATION by Hugh William Scorah B.A., The University of Victoria, 2008 M.A., The University of Victoria, 2010 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Forestry) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) May 2022 © Hugh William Scorah, 2022 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Economic decision making under uncertainty for wildfire fuels mitigation submitted by Hugh Scorah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Forestry Examining Committee: Harry Nelson, Associate Professor, Forest Resources Management, UBC Supervisor Lori Daniels, Professor, Forest and Conservation Sciences, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Mike Flannigan, Professor, Natural Resource Science, Thompson Rivers University Supervisory Committee Member James Vercammen, Professor, Sauder School of Business, Land and Food Systems, UBC University Examiner Mathieu Bourbonnais, Assistant Professor, EEGS, UBC Okanagan University Examiner iii Abstract Increases in wildfire suppression cost expenditures, an upward trend in burned area, increasing damages and evacuations, along with research pointing to a worsening trend in all of these areas as a result of climate change is motivating research into methods to limit the consequences of wildfire. My research is chiefly concerned with the use of economic tools to identify the best use of resources when evaluating fuel mitigation efforts both from a project perspective and at the landscape level. Using tools from Extreme Value Theory, I show that the distribution of wildfire costs is not likely to follow a normal distribution and instead is more likely drawn from fat-tailed distributions. This distribution implies …
has type: Thesis/Dissertation
date issued: 2022-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0413311
language: eng
degree discipline: Forestry
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Nelson, Harry W., 1961-
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/81473