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About

About

Abílio Pereira Pacheco has a PhD in the “Doctoral Program in Industrial Engineering and Management” at FEUP with Professor João Claro as advisor; is research (pos-doc) at INESC TEC, where he is working in flexible design under uncertainty applied to forest fire management systems (in the development of FIRE-ENGINE – the only Engineering Systems project approved in MIT Portugal Program calls); and he is Graduate Teaching Assistant (“assistente convidado”) at FEUP, since 2012, lecturing on “Economics and Management”, “Operations Management”, “Management”, and “Statistics for Management and Policy Research”.

In 2012, during the fall, he was a visiting student with the Engineering Systems Division at MIT. There, he worked with Professor Richard de Neufville, Ross Collins and Hèctor Fornés, and also took the courses “Science, Technology and Public Policy”, “System Dynamics”, “Engineering Systems Analysis for Design” and “Risk and Decision Analysis” with Professors Kenneth A. Oye, Anjali Sastry, John Sterman, Richard de Neufville and Mort Webster, respectively.

He won two awards in recent years, a FEUP Merit Scholarship (2010) and a University of Porto Merit Scholarship (2012).

He has an MSc in Services Engineering and Management (FEUP) completed in 2011, and an undergraduate degree in Mathematics (2009). Prior to returning to the University, he was a project manager and later a manager and director at Seara.com (2000-2006) of which he was a founding partner, and director of the Chip7 S.A. Corporate Business Division (2006-2008).

Interest
Topics
Details

Details

002
Publications

2018

Operational flexibility in forest fire prevention and suppression: a spatially explicit intra-annual optimization analysis, considering prevention, (pre)suppression, and escape costs

Authors
Pacheco, AP; Claro, J;

Publication
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH

Abstract
Increasing wildfire threats and costs escalate the complexity of forest fire management challenges, which is grounded in complex interactions between ecological, social, economic, and policy factors. It is immersed in this difficult context that decision-makers must settle on an investment mix within a portfolio of available options, subject to limited funds and under great uncertainty. We model intra-annual fire management as a problem of multistage capacity investment in a portfolio of management resources, enabling fuel treatments and fire preparedness. We consider wildfires as the demand, with uncertainty in the severity of the fire season and in the occurrence, time, place, and severity of specific fires. We focus our analysis on the influence of changes in the volatility of wildfires and in the costs of escaped wildfires, on the postponement of capacity investment along the year, on the optimal budget, and on the investment mix. Using a hypothetical test landscape, we verify that the value of postponement increases significantly for scenarios of increased uncertainty (higher volatility) and higher escape costs, as also does the optimal budget (although not proportionally to the changes in the escape costs). Additionally, the suppression/prevention budget ratio is highly sensitive to changes in escape costs, while it remains mostly insensitive to changes in volatility. Furthermore, we show the policy implications of these findings at operational (e.g., spatial solutions) and strategic levels (e.g., climate change). Exploring the impact of increasing escape costs in the optimal investment mix, we identified in our instances four qualitative system stages, which can be related to specific socioecological contexts and used as the basis for policy (re)design. In addition to questioning some popular myths, our results highlight the value of fuel treatments and the contextual nature of the optimal portfolio mix.

2018

Does it pay to invest in better suppression resources?: policy analysis of alternative scenarios with simulation

Authors
Pacheco, AP; et. al.,;

Publication
Advances in forest fire research 2018

Abstract

2018

Flexible design of a helipad network for forest firefighting helicopters, applied to the case of Sardinia

Authors
Torres, H; et. al.,;

Publication
Advances in forest fire research 2018

Abstract

2016

The role of fire-suppression force in limiting the spread of extremely large forest fires in Portugal

Authors
Fernandes, PM; Pacheco, AP; Almeida, R; Claro, J;

Publication
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH

Abstract
Large forest fires are notorious for their environmental and socio-economic impacts and are assigned a disproportionately high percentage of the fire management budget. This study addresses extremely large fires (ELF, C2500 ha) in Portugal (2003-2013). We analysed the effect of fire-suppression force variation on ELF duration, size and growth rate, versus the effect of the concomitant fire environment (namely fuel and weather) conditions. ELF occurred in highly flammable landscapes and typically were impelled by extreme fire weather conditions. Allocation of suppression resources (normalized per unit of burned area or perimeter length) was disparate among fires, suggesting inadequate incident management. Fire-suppression effort did not affect time to containment modelled by survival analysis. Regression tree analysis indicated ELF spread to be negatively affected by higher fire-suppression resourcing, less severe fire weather, lower time to containment and higher presence of <9-year-old fuels, by decreasing order of importance; regional variability was relevant. Fire environment-to-fire suppression ratios of influence were 3: 1 for fire size and 1: 1 for fire growth rate, respectively, explaining 76 and 60 % of the existing variability. Results highlight the opportunistic nature of large-fire containment. To minimize the area burned by ELF, management and operational improvements leading to faster containment are recommended, rather than higher fire-suppression resourcing; more effective identification and exploration of containment opportunities are preferable to the accumulation of suppression resources.

2015

Cohesive fire management within an uncertain environment: A review of risk handling and decision support systems

Authors
Pacheco, AP; Claro, J; Fernandes, PM; de Neufville, R; Oliveira, TM; Borges, JG; Rodrigues, JC;

Publication
FOREST ECOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT

Abstract
Wildfire management has been struggling in recent years with escalating devastation, expenditures, and complexity. Given the copious factors involved and the complexity of their interactions, uncertainty in the outcomes is a prominent feature of wildfire management strategies, at both policy and operational levels. Improvements in risk handling and in risk-based decision support tools have therefore a key role in addressing these challenges. In this paper, we review key systems created to support wildfire management decision-making at different levels and scales, and describe their evolution from an initial focus on landscape-level fire growth simulation and burn probability assessment, to the incorporation of exposure and economic loss potential (allowing the translation of ignition likelihood, fire environment terrain, fuels, and weather and suppression efficacy into potential fire effects), the integration with forest management and planning, and more recently, to developments in the assessment of values at risk, including real-time assessment. This evolution is linked to a progressive widening of the scope of usage of these systems, from an initial more limited application to risk assessment, to the subsequent inclusion of functionality enabling their Utilization in the context of risk management, and more recently, to their explicit casting in the broader societal context of risks and decisions, from a risk governance perspective. This joint evolution can be seen as the result of a simultaneous pull from methodological progresses in risk handling, and push from technological progress in wildfire management decision support tool, as well as more broadly in computational power. We identify the key benefits and challenges in the development and adoption of these systems, as well as future plausible research trends.

Supervised
thesis

2022

Gestão do Portefólio de Projetos de Investigação, Desenvolvimento e Inovação no SGIFR: desenvolvimento de uma ferramenta web de apoio à gestão do conhecimento

Author
Paulo Alexandre da Costa Mota

Institution
UP-FEUP

2022

Healthcare Services: Improving conventional surgical rooms through the adoption of a new service design.

Author
Eduarda Pinto Pereira

Institution
UP-FEUP

2022

em definição

Author
Jongmin Han

Institution
UP-FEUP

2022

Recuperação da floresta no pós-fogo: avaliação económica de estratégias alternativas de reflorestação

Author
Fabio Augusto Freitas Gonçalves

Institution
UP-FEUP

2022

The forest firefighting helicopters' network in Portugal: Data analysis, optimisation, and flexible design

Author
Leonor Teixeira Cid Martins

Institution
UP-FEUP