I think the analytical approach is a good one, but I'm not sure the results are as simple as you imply, or have the result you may be led to believe. The damages of the Rim and Zaca fires were large, but the question is could the system actually prevent the ignition of the fire and decrease the costs of containment. In both of those cases, the answer to the former is <no> and to the latter is <unlikely>.
_________________
The Yosemite Rim Fire was man-made and had outsize damages because of inaccesibility and bad policy. Viz:
The fire was caused by a hunter's illegal fire that went out of control
The blaze was difficult to fight because of inaccessible terrain and erratic winds, forcing firefighters to be reactive
Also contributing to the fire was a pre-1980s policy of suppressing small natural fires. The lack of those fires created nearly a century's worth of fuel to burn, resulting in a massive forest fire killing virtually all plant life in its path.
A widespread heat wave and drought conditions helped to spread the fire and make it difficult to combat.
_________
It takes hours if not days to get men and supplies into some of these locations. On the flip side, the grow very, very quickly. Lets look at the Rim Fire:
Only 40 acres when it was discovered, it grew to 10,000 acres within 36 hours and 100,000 acres after four days.
The premise that a fire is like an ICBM launch that can be shot down before it explodes via star-wars is flawed. Its the sort of thing that people in Ivory towers believe to make themselves feel better. Which is fine, but its not clear at all that such a mindset correlates with reality.
Lets look at the Zaca Fire:
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The Zaca Fire was a wildfire which began burning northeast of Buellton, California, in Santa Barbara County, California. The fire started on July 4, 2007, and by August 31, it had burned over 240,207 acres (972.083 km2), making it California's second largest fire in recorded history after the Cedar Fire of 2003.[1][2] The fire was 100% contained on September 2, 2007.[3] It was declared controlled on October 29, 2007.[4]
The fire was started as a result of sparks from a grinding machine on private property which was being used to repair a water pipe.
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Again, man made fire. People doing stupid things. Entirely preventable. On the flip side, would the Bird save any money by early warning? Highly unlikely. There was no delay in getting at this other than it being called in. So, you would not save any material amount on this.
The order of magnitude of cost savings would appear to be perhaps 1/10 of the actual cost, not 100/100. So, in this case, perhaps you save $12MM on the Rim Fire ans $11MM on the Zaca fire. So, for these two events you save $20MM. At a cost of 200-400 million, you would need to incure 10x to 20x of these large scale fires. But this case would be devastating, if ever incurred. So using it as a rational backdrop seems off. If we are really expecting that, we should adopt strategies of prevention and fuel mitigation as much if not more-so than early warning.
You've convinced me that the satellite would probably not in the end recoup it's cost. It makes intuitive sense that the most dangerous and costly fires are those close to civilization that can be reported quickly. I was mentally working with a probability of something like 35%, but it probably should have been something less than 5%, without running any actual analysis.
I wasn't trying to imply that the total figures were the likely savings, which is why I explicitly noted it as the cost of an accelerated response vs. a typical response, whatever that may be.
Your dismissal of an earlier response to the rim fire sort of depends on how long it took to get to 40 acres. I imagine it wasn't that long, but it matters.
Also, there are thousands of wildfires each year. There is plenty of opportunity to scrape payback out a little at a time, no need for dozens of major incidents.
(I don't have strong feelings about whether such a satellite makes sense, but with early detection capability, maybe it makes sense to increase the capability to drop suppressant on short notice, and so on.)
Fair points, but I think the important takeaway is that $100mm per fire in <savings> is incredibly flawed. The flipside is if you save $1-2mm/per fire, you'd almost be encouraging fires (100-200?) in order to see a positive ROI.
As a practical matter, many of these fires cannot be put out once started, they can only be contained. (You don't just drive in a truck and shoot water out of a hose). The methods of containment are not fast, and they don't work all that well in areas like the Yosemite backcountry. There are other political issues involved. For example, the inability to use machinery in a Wilderness Area. Without taking a position on the logic of that restriction, consider the practical effects. Removal of fuel, lack of fire roads, walk-in only access, etc.
Empirically, its common for fires that start in very populated areas to still be incredibly damaging. Early warning in these areas does not seem it will materially alter the situation on the ground. Take for example the Powerhouse fire earlier this year in LA. [1] That was visible to the naked eye almost immediately. But the are is a dry, high-desert tinderbox. Ground zero was immediately next to the local San Francisquito <fire station>, yer it took 11 days to contain, and burned 30,000 acres despite its immediate alarm and proximity to roads and fire-fighting gear.
The Yosemite back-country is far more inaccessible and has far more fuel below tree level that the area around the powerhouse fire. I think the notion that once started it could have been contained in under 24 hours to be almost implausible. And once it reached 40 acres, we saw what happened next. Just as a sanity check, Assuming it was 20 miles in to start, it would take 2 days to walk to the area from the nearest road. You will not be dropping in smoke-jumpers like navy seals into this terrain in the middle of the night. Its steep, rugged, and when its not is densley forested. The nearest meadow may be in the next canyon.
In any event, it would be interesting to thing about what we would do with such a system if it were in place. Let's say that we got if for FREE. Then think about the next 200 million of infrastructre that would be required to actually put out the fires more quickly. My guess is that doing this logistical exercise would be more the bottleneck than the actual alert time. The prevelance of cell phones, sat-phones, epirb beacons, and Spot devices greatly increases the ability to comuunicate <SOS>. They do not make it very quick to get help, however. The benhcmark is 24-48 hours at a minimum if you are in a remote area, even with a Helo in many cases.
_________________
The Yosemite Rim Fire was man-made and had outsize damages because of inaccesibility and bad policy. Viz:
The fire was caused by a hunter's illegal fire that went out of control
The blaze was difficult to fight because of inaccessible terrain and erratic winds, forcing firefighters to be reactive
Also contributing to the fire was a pre-1980s policy of suppressing small natural fires. The lack of those fires created nearly a century's worth of fuel to burn, resulting in a massive forest fire killing virtually all plant life in its path.
A widespread heat wave and drought conditions helped to spread the fire and make it difficult to combat.
_________
It takes hours if not days to get men and supplies into some of these locations. On the flip side, the grow very, very quickly. Lets look at the Rim Fire:
Only 40 acres when it was discovered, it grew to 10,000 acres within 36 hours and 100,000 acres after four days.
The premise that a fire is like an ICBM launch that can be shot down before it explodes via star-wars is flawed. Its the sort of thing that people in Ivory towers believe to make themselves feel better. Which is fine, but its not clear at all that such a mindset correlates with reality.
Lets look at the Zaca Fire:
______________
The Zaca Fire was a wildfire which began burning northeast of Buellton, California, in Santa Barbara County, California. The fire started on July 4, 2007, and by August 31, it had burned over 240,207 acres (972.083 km2), making it California's second largest fire in recorded history after the Cedar Fire of 2003.[1][2] The fire was 100% contained on September 2, 2007.[3] It was declared controlled on October 29, 2007.[4]
The fire was started as a result of sparks from a grinding machine on private property which was being used to repair a water pipe.
______________
Again, man made fire. People doing stupid things. Entirely preventable. On the flip side, would the Bird save any money by early warning? Highly unlikely. There was no delay in getting at this other than it being called in. So, you would not save any material amount on this.
The order of magnitude of cost savings would appear to be perhaps 1/10 of the actual cost, not 100/100. So, in this case, perhaps you save $12MM on the Rim Fire ans $11MM on the Zaca fire. So, for these two events you save $20MM. At a cost of 200-400 million, you would need to incure 10x to 20x of these large scale fires. But this case would be devastating, if ever incurred. So using it as a rational backdrop seems off. If we are really expecting that, we should adopt strategies of prevention and fuel mitigation as much if not more-so than early warning.