A REVIEW OF INITIAL ATTACK FIRE CREW PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFECTIVENESS

Information regarding the productivity and effectiveness of initial at tack fire crews is essential to a wide variety of forest fire manageme nt activities. This paper provides a selective review of crew producti vity research conducted in Australia, Canada, and the United States an d a cursory overview of how such information is used in computer-based fire management decision support systems. A description of several wi dely used rules-of-thumb that relate suppression effectiveness to fire intensity is presented as well as our understanding of how these guid elines may have evolved. This is followed by an example of some of the difficulties associated with transferring productivity and effectiven ess information between fire management organizations and fire environ ments. The paper concludes with a discussion of strategies for investi gating initial attack crew performance.