Mapping the Forest Fire Risk Zones Using Artificial Intelligence with Risk Factors Data

Geographical information system data has been used in forest fire risk zone mapping studies commonly. However, forest fires are caused by many factors, which cannot be explained only by geographical and meteorological reasons. Human-induced factors also play an important role in occurrence of forest fires and these factors depend on various social and economic conditions. This article aims to prepare a fire risk zone map by using a data set consisting of nine human-induced factors, three natural factors, and a temperature factor causing forest fires. Moreover, an artificial intelligence method, k-means, clustering algorithm was employed in preparation of the fire risk zone map. Turkey was selected as the study area as there are social and economic varieties among its zones. Therefore, the forestry zones in Turkey were separated into three groups as low, moderate, and high-risk categories and a map was provided for these risk zones. The map reveals that the forestry zones on the west coast of Turkey are under high risk of forest fire while the moderate risk zones mostly exist in the southeastern zones. The zones located in the interior parts, in the east, and on the north coast of Turkey have comparatively lower forest fire risks.

Forest Fire Risk Zone Mapping of Eravikulam National Park in India

Forest fire is one of the most common natural hazards occurring in the Western Ghats region of Kerala and is one of the reasons for forest degradation. This natural disaster causes considerable damage to the biodiversity of this region during the dry fire season. The area selected for the present study, Eravikulam National Park, which is predominantly of grassland vegetation, is also prone to forest fires. This study aims to delineate the forest fire risk zones in Eravikulam National Park using remote sensing (RS) data and geographic information system (GIS) techniques. In the present study, methods such as Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Frequency Ratio (FR) were used to derive the weights, and the results were compared. We have used seven factors, i.e. land cover types, normalized difference vegetation index, normalized difference water index, slope angle, slope aspect, distance from the settlement, and distance from the road to prepare the fire risk zone map. The area of the prepared risk zone maps is divided into three zones, namely low, moderate, and high. From the study, it was found that the fire occurring in this area is due to natural as well as anthropogenic factors. The prepared forest fire risk zone maps are validated using the fire incidence data for the period from January 2003 to June 2019 collected from the records of the Forest Survey of India. The investigation revealed that 72% and 24% of the fire incidences occurred in the high risk zone of the maps prepared using the AHP and FR methods, respectively, which ascertained the superiority of the AHP method over the FR method for forest fire risk zone mapping. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis gives an area under the ROC curve (AUC) value of 0.767 and 0.567 for the AHP and FR methods, respectively. The risk zone maps will be useful for staff of the forest department, planners, and officials of the disaster management department to take effective preventive and mitigation measures.

PRIORITIZATION OF FOREST FIRE HAZARD RISK SIMULATION USING HYBRID GREY RELATIVITY ANALYSIS (HGRA) AND FUZZY ANALYTICAL HIERARCHY PROCESS (FAHP) COUPLED WITH MULTICRITERIA DECISION ANALYSIS (MCDA) TECHNIQUES – A COMPARATIVE STUDY ANALYSIS

Forests are important dynamic systems which are widely attracted by wild fires worldwide. Due to the complexity and non-linearity of the causative forest fire problems, employing sophisticated hybrid evolutionary algorithms is a logical task to achieve a reliable approximation of this environmental threats. This estimate will provide the outline of priority areas for preventing activities and allocation of fire fighters’ stations, seeking to minimize possible damages caused by fires. This study aims at prioritizing the forest fire risk of Wassa West district of Ghana. The study considered static causative factors such as Land use and land cover (which include forest, built-ups and settlement areas), slope, aspect, linear features (water bodies and roads) and dynamic causative factors such as wind speed, precipitation, and temperature were used. The methods employed include a Hybrid Grey Relativity Analysis (HGRA) and Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) techniques. The fuzzy sets integrated with AHP in a decision-making algorithm using geographic information system (GIS) was used to model the fire risk in the study area. FAHP and HGRA methods were used for estimating the importance (weights) of the effective factors in forest fire modelling. Based on their modelling methods, the expert ideas were used to express the relative importance and priority of the major criteria and sub-criteria in forest fire risk in the study area. The expert ideas were analyzed based on FAHP and HGRA. The major criteria models and fire risk model were presented based on these FAHP and HGRA weights. On the other hand, the spatial data of the sub criteria were provided and assembled in GIS environment to obtain the sub-criteria maps. Each sub-criterion map was converted to raster format and it was reclassified based on risks of its classes to fire occurrence. The maps of each major criterion were obtained by weighted overlay of its sub criteria maps considering to major criterion model in GIS environment. Finally, the map of fire risk was obtained by weighted overlay of major criteria maps considering to fire risk model in GIS. The results showed that the FAHP model showed superiority than HGRA in prioritizing forest fire risk of the study area in terms of statistical analysis with a standard deviation of 0.09277 m as compared to 0.1122 m respectively. The obtained fire risk map can be used as a decision support system for predicting of the future trends in the study area. The optimized structures of the proposed models could serve as a good alternative to traditional forest predictive models, and this can be a promisingly testament used for future planning and decision making in the proposed areas.

Dynamic changes in moisture content and applicability analysis of a typical litter prediction model in Yunnan Province

Background Forest fire risk predictions are based on the most conservation daily predictions, and the lowest litter moisture content of each day is often used to predict the day’s fire risk. Yunnan Province is the area with the most frequent and serious forest fires in China, but there is almost no research on the dynamic changes and model predictions of the litter moisture content in this area. Therefore, to reduce the occurrence of forest fires and improve the accuracy of forest fire risk predictions, it is necessary to understand these dynamic changes and establish an appropriate prediction model for the typical litter moisture content in Yunnan Province. Method During the fire prevention period, daily dynamic changes in the litter moisture content are obtained by monitoring the daily step size, and the relationships between the litter moisture content and meteorological elements are analyzed. In this study, the meteorological element regression method, moisture code method and direction estimation method are selected to establish litter moisture content prediction models, and the applicability of each model is analyzed. Results We found that dynamic changes in the litter moisture content have obvious lags compared with meteorological elements, and the litter moisture content is mainly related to the air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed. With an increase in the sampling interval of meteorological elements, the significances of these correlations first increase and then decrease. The moisture content value obtained by directly using the moisture code method in the Fire Weather Index (FWI) significantly different from the measured value, so this method is not applicable. The mean absolute error (MAE) and mean relative error (MRE) values obtained with the meteorological element regression method are 2.97% and 14.06%, those from the moisture code method are 3.27% and 14.07%, and those from the direct estimation method are 2.82% and 12.76%, respectively. Conclusions The direct estimation method has the lowest error and the strongest extrapolation ability; this method can meet the needs of daily fire forecasting. Therefore, it is feasible to use the direct estimation method to predict litter moisture contents in Yunnan Province.

GIS-Based Forest Fire Risk Model: A Case Study in Laoshan National Forest Park, Nanjing

Fire risk prediction is significant for fire prevention and fire resource allocation. Fire risk maps are effective methods for quantifying regional fire risk. Laoshan National Forest Park has many precious natural resources and tourist attractions, but there is no fire risk assessment model. This paper aims to construct the forest fire risk map for Nanjing Laoshan National Forest Park. The forest fire risk model is constructed by factors (altitude, aspect, topographic wetness index, slope, distance to roads and populated areas, normalized difference vegetation index, and temperature) which have a great influence on the probability of inducing fire in Laoshan. Since the importance of factors in different study areas is inconsistent, it is necessary to calculate the significance of each factor of Laoshan. After the significance calculation is completed, the fire risk model of Laoshan can be obtained. Then, the fire risk map can be plotted based on the model. This fire risk map can clarify the fire risk level of each part of the study area, with 16.97% extremely low risk, 48.32% low risk, 17.35% moderate risk, 12.74% high risk and 4.62% extremely high risk, and it is compared with the data of MODIS fire anomaly point. The result shows that the accuracy of the risk map is 76.65%.