Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 28;12(1):5280. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-08730-y.
Over the past decades, wildfire has imposed a considerable cost on natural resources and human lives. In many regions, annual wildfire trends show puzzling oscillatory patterns with increasing amplitudes for burned areas over time. This paper aims to examine the potential causes of such patterns by developing and examining a dynamic simulation model that represents interconnected social and natural dynamics in a coupled system. We develop a generic dynamic model and, based on simulation results, postulate that the interconnection between human and natural subsystems is a source of the observed cyclical patterns in wildfires in which risk perception regulates activities that can result in more fire and development of vulnerable properties. Our simulation-based policy analysis points to a non-linear characteristic of the system, which rises due to the interconnections between the human side and the natural side of the system. This has a major policy implication: in contrast to studies that look for the most effective policy to contain wildfires, we show that a long-term solution is not a single action but is a combination of multiple actions that simultaneously target both human and natural sides of the system.
在过去的几十年里，野火给自然资源和人类生命造成了相当大的代价。在许多地区，年度野火趋势显示出令人费解的波动模式，随着时间的推移，燃烧区域的幅度不断增加。本文旨在通过开发和检验一个动态模拟模型来研究这种模式的潜在原因，该模型代表了一个耦合系统中相互关联的社会和自然动态。我们开发了一个通用的动态模型，并根据模拟结果假设，人类和自然子系统之间的相互联系是观察到的野火周期性模式的一个来源，在这种模式中，风险感知调节可能导致更多火灾和脆弱性财产发展的活动。我们基于模拟的政策分析指出了系统的非线性特征，这是由于系统的人类侧和自然侧之间的相互联系而引起的。这具有重大的政策意义：与寻找最有效的控制野火的政策的研究不同，我们表明，长期解决方案不是单一的行动，而是同时针对系统的人类侧和自然侧的多种行动的组合。
