Scheduling in a multi-processor environment with deteriorating job processing times and decreasing values: the case of forest fires

In forest fire fighting, time and effort required to control a fire increase if fire containment effort is delayed. The problem of scheduling multiple resources employed as parallel identical or non-identical processors in order to contain N≥2 fires may be tackled using the concept of deteriorating jobs. In this paper, the above problem is stated and a model is formulated, the criterion being to maximize the total remaining value of the burnt areas and a real-time synchronous heuristic algorithm is proposed. The heuristic algorithm's efficiency was compared to real data provided by Greek Fire Corps from a severe wildfire near Athens in June-July, 2007.