Young Researcher and Innovator Conference Grant

Optimization of Aerial Wildfire Suppression Under Uncertain Fire Spread

Erdi Dasdemir, Hacettepe Universitesi, Ankara, Turkey
Bismark Singh, University of Southampton, United Kingdom

The 24th Conference of the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS 2026)
Vienna, Austria
12-17 July 2026

Grantee: Erdi Dasdemir, Hacettepe Universitesi, Ankara, Turkey
Type of publication: Abstract
Type of presentation: Oral

Start date: 2026-07-12
End date: 2026-07-17
Awarded: 2026-05-18

Abstract

We study aerial wildfire initial attack as a two-stage stochastic routing and scheduling problem under uncertain fire spread. Aerial vehicles are assigned and routed to emerging ignitions whose growth and propagation depend on stochastic environmental conditions and intervention timing. The objective is to maximize preserved value through timely suppression. We develop an exact stochastic optimization model and a hybrid genetic algorithm with simulation-based fitness, plan-aware pruning, and greedy seeding. Results show the GA closely matches optimal solutions while running much faster.