A Practical Approach to Assess the Wildfire Ignition and Spreading Capacities of Vegetated Areas at Landscape-scale

Abstract

We bring a practical and comprehensive GIS-based framework to utilize freely available remote sensed datasets to assess wildfire ignition probability and spreading capacities of vegetated landscapes. The study area consists of the country-level scale of the Romanian territory, characterized by a diversity of vegetated landscapes threatened by the consequences of climate change. We utilize the Wildfire Ignition Probability/ Wildfire Spreading Capacity Index (WIPI/ WSCI). WIPI/ WSCI models rely on a multi-criteria data mining procedure assessing the social, environmental, geophysical, and fuel properties of the study area based on open access remote sensed data. We utilized the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis to weigh each indexing criterion's impact factor and assess the model's overall sensitivity. Introducing ROC analysis at an earlier stage of the workflow elevated the final Area Under the Curve (AUC) of WIPI from 0.705 to 0.778 and WSCI from 0.586 to 0.802. The modeling results enable discussion on the vulnerability of protected areas and the exposure of man-made structures to wildfire risk. Our study shows that within the wildland-urban interface of Bucharest's metropolitan area, there is a remarkable building stock like healthcare, residential and educational that are significantly exposed to wildfire spreading the risk.