Modeling Wildland Firefighter Travel Rates by Terrain Slope: Results from GPS-Tracking of Type 1 Crew Movement
Open Access
- 15 September 2020
- Vol. 3 (3), 52
- https://doi.org/10.3390/fire3030052
Abstract
Escape routes keep firefighters safe by providing efficient evacuation pathways from the fire line to safety zones. Effectively utilizing escape routes requires a precise understanding of how much time it will take firefighters to traverse them. To improve this understanding, we collected GPS-tracked travel rate data from US Interagency Hotshot “Type 1” Crews during training in 2019. Firefighters were tracked while hiking, carrying standard loads (e.g., packs, tools, etc.) along trails with a precisely-measured terrain slope derived from airborne lidar. The effects of the slope on the instantaneous travel rate were assessed by three models generated using non-linear quantile regression, representing low (bottom third), moderate (middle third), and high (upper third) rates of travel, which were validated using k-fold cross-validation. The models peak at about a −3° (downhill) slope, similar to previous slope-dependent travel rate functions. The moderate firefighter travel rate model mostly predicts faster movement than previous slope-dependent travel rate functions, suggesting that firefighters generally move faster than non-firefighting personnel while hiking. Steepness was also found to have a smaller effect on firefighter travel rates than previously predicted. The travel rate functions produced by this study provide guidelines for firefighter escape route travel rates and allow for more accurate and flexible wildland firefighting safety planning.Keywords
This publication has 24 references indexed in Scilit:
- Current status and future needs of the BehavePlus Fire Modeling SystemInternational Journal of Wildland Fire, 2014
- Decision Making Effectiveness in Wildfire Incident Management TeamsJournal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 2006
- Setting Wildfire Evacuation Trigger Points Using Fire Spread Modeling and GISTransactions in GIS, 2005
- Effects of load carriage, load position, and walking speed on energy cost of walkingApplied Ergonomics, 2004
- Least-cost paths in mountainous terrainComputers & Geosciences, 2004
- Wildland firefighter load carriage: effects on transit time and physiological responses during simulated escape to safety zoneInternational Journal of Wildland Fire, 2003
- Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910The Western Historical Quarterly, 2002
- Quantile RegressionJournal of Economic Perspectives, 2001
- An interior point algorithm for nonlinear quantile regressionJournal of Econometrics, 1996
- Running Uphill: An Experimental Result and its ApplicationsJournal of the Operational Research Society, 1994