title: Resolving future fire management conflicts using multicriteria decision making.
abstract: Management strategies to reduce the risks to human life and property from wildfire commonly involve burning native vegetation. However, planned burning can conflict with other societal objectives such as human health and biodiversity conservation. These conflicts are likely to intensify as fire regimes change under future climates and as growing human populations encroach farther into fire-prone ecosystems. Decisions about managing fire risks are therefore complex and warrant more sophisticated approaches than are typically used. We applied a multicriteria decision making approach (MCDA) with the potential to improve fire management outcomes to the case of a highly populated, biodiverse, and flammable wildland-urban interface. We considered the effects of 22 planned burning options on 8 objectives: house protection, maximizing water quality, minimizing carbon emissions and impacts on human health, and minimizing declines of 5 distinct species types. The MCDA identified a small number of management options (burning forest adjacent to houses) that performed well for most objectives, but not for one species type (arboreal mammal) or for water quality. Although MCDA made the conflict between objectives explicit, resolution of the problem depended on the weighting assigned to each objective. Additive weighting of criteria traded off the arboreal mammal and water quality objectives for other objectives. Multiplicative weighting identified scenarios that avoided poor outcomes for any objective, which is important for avoiding potentially irreversible biodiversity losses. To distinguish reliably among management options, future work should focus on reducing uncertainty in outcomes across a range of objectives. Considering management actions that have more predictable outcomes than landscape fuel management will be important. We found that, where data were adequate, an MCDA can support decision making in the complex and often conflicted area of fire management.
authors.affiliation: National Environmental Research Program Environmental Decisions Group and ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, St Lucia Qld, Australia.|Fenner School of Environment and Society, Building 141, Linnaeus Way, Australian National University, ACT, 0200, Australia.|School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University Geelong, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia.
authors.forename: Don A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Driscoll
authors.affiliation: National Environmental Research Program Environmental Decisions Group and ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, St Lucia Qld, Australia.|School of BioScience, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bode
authors.affiliation: Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, Institute of Conservation Biology and Environmental Management, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia.
authors.forename: Ross A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Bradstock
authors.affiliation: NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, 43 Bridge Street, Hurstville, NSW 2220, Australia.|Centre for Ecosystem Science, School of Biological Earth & Environmental Science, Biological Sciences building (D26), University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Keith
authors.affiliation: Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, Institute of Conservation Biology and Environmental Management, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia.|School of Forest and Ecosystem Sciences, University of Melbourne, Water Street, Creswick, VIC 3363, Australia.
authors.forename: Trent D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Penman
authors.affiliation: Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, Institute of Conservation Biology and Environmental Management, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia.
authors.forename: Owen F
authors.initials: OF
authors.lastname: Price
mesh_terms: D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods*; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D017753:Ecosystem; D005390:Fires / Q000517:prevention & control*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009517:New South Wales; D018570:Risk Assessment
keywords: WUI; fuel reduction; interfaz tierra silvestre-urbana; prescribed burning; quema prescrita; reducción de combustible; structured decision making; toma estructurada de decisiones; wildland-urban interface