- Title:
-
The Economic Cost of Wildfires
- Date:
- September 2009
- Organisations
- NZFS
- Authors:
- Jiani Wu, William Kaliyati, Kel Sanderson
-
Location:
-
New Zealand,
New Zealand
Overview
This research covers three broad categories of wildfire costs. To estimate the cost of wildfires in New Zealand, BERL integrated two models, the Least Cost plus Loss (LC + L) model and the Cost plus Net Value Change (C + NVC) model. This research integrates these two models in order to capture both the immediate effects of wildfires as well as the medium and long-term economic costs. Additionally the economic cost has been divided into pre-suppression, suppression, and after fire costs. Suppression costs refer to the resources used to fight wildfires and after fire costs reflect the damage resulting from wildfires. Pre-suppression, or fire prevention, is not a direct cost of wildfire, but it is included as a third cost category in this research. Pre-suppression reduces the probability of wildfires and the associated fire damage.
