Modeling forest fire danger from geographic information systems

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
This paper presents a methodology to obtain fire danger maps using a Geographic Information System (GIS). The study area is located in the county of Valparaiso, Central Chile. The following fire danger variables were generated for this area: fuel type maps, topography, accessibility and weather data. Combined, these variables indicate the intermediate danger indices, which represent the flammability of vegetation species, and the risks associated to human activities and topographic features. The coefficients for generating these intermediate indices as well as the final index were obtained from multiple regressions, where fire frequency data for a five‐year period was considered the dependent variable. The final Fire Danger Index offers a correlation of 0.73 with fire occurrence for the study area.