- Title:
-
Prediction of Rural Fire Risk for the Wellington Region
- Date:
- November 2001
- Organisations
- NZFS
- Authors:
- Jacob McC. Overton; John R. Leathwick
- Location:
- New Zealand, New Zealand
Overview
Prediction of Rural Fire Risk for the Wellington Region investigated the potential for using national-scale climatic information to make spatially explicit predictions of fire risk.
Fire risk was modeled as a function of environmental and cultural factors using a modern spatial analysis technique. Spatial predictions of fire risk were made for the Wellington Region and the North Island, using generalized regression analysis and spatial prediction (GRASP).
A dataset of 1390 fires reported to the NRFA in the Wellington region over the decade 1989-1999 was used as the observed fires. For the purposes of modelling from this dataset, fire risk was defined as the probability of one or more fires per hectare per decade. A number of spatial predictor layers were developed for this project, including:
- five climatic
- three landform
- two cultural variables
- one landcover variable.
The resulting statistical models of fire risk were imported into a geographic information system (GIS) and used to make predictions of fire risk.
The project demonstrated the feasibility and power of GRASP methodology to make spatially explicit predictions of fire risk. Using an incomplete data set confined to the Wellington Region, this approach yielded predictions within this region that accord well with the overall occurrence of fires. The results of this approach could be improved considerably by more comprehensive information on fire locations and continued improvement in spatial information that may act as spatial predictors.
