Time-Dependent Queueing Approach To Helicopter Allocation For Forest Fire Initial-Attack*

Helicopters are used extensively to transport initial-attack crews to forest fires in the province of Ontario. Each day fire managers must decide how to allocate the available helicopters to initial-at.tack bases. The helitack transport system at each base can be viewed as a multi-channel queue with customers (fires) and servers (helicopters). The authors describe a time-dependent queueing model of the helitack system and use numerical methods to estimate some of its operating characteristics. A dynamic programming model is then used to specify an optimal allocation of the available helicopters to helitack bases.