Logic-Based benders Decomposition for Wildfire Suppression

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel logic-based Benders decomposition method to optimize wildfire suppression resource placement, effectively solving complex instances to proven optimality using a non-linear integer programming model.

Contribution

The paper presents a new exact solution approach combining logic-based Benders decomposition with a non-linear integer programming formulation for wildfire suppression.

Findings

Successfully solves challenging instances to proven optimality

Outperforms existing methods in benchmark tests

Efficiently handles complex wildfire spread scenarios

Abstract

We study the problem of locating fire suppression resources in a burning landscape in order to minimise the total area burned. The landscape is modelled as a directed graph, with nodes representing regions of the landscape, and arcs representing adjacency relationships. The fire spread is modelled using the minimum travel time principle. We propose a non-linear integer programming formulation and an exact solution approach utilising logic-based Benders decomposition. We benchmark the approach against a mixed integer program and an iterated local search metaheuristic from the literature. We are able to solve challenging instances to proven optimality in a reasonable amount of time.