Using correlative data analysis to develop weather index that estimates the risk of forest fires in Lebanon & Mediterranean: Assessment versus prevalent meteorological indices

Abstract

Forest fires are among the most dangerous natural threats that bring calamities to a community and can turn it totally upside down.In this paper, to enable a prevention mechanism, we rely on analytics to build a novel fire danger index model that predicts the risk of a developing fire in north Lebanon. We use correlation methods such as statistical regression, Pearson, Spearman and Kendall's Tau correlation to identify the most affecting parameters on fire ignition during the last six years in north Lebanon.The correlations of these attributes with fire occurrence are studied in order to develop the fire danger index. The strongly correlated attributes are then derived. We rely on linear regression to model the fire index as function of a reduced set of weather parameters that are easy to measure.This is critical as it facilitates the application of such prevention models in developing countries like Lebanon. The outcomes resulting from validation tests of the proposed index show high performance in the Lebanese regions. An assessment versus common widespread weather models is then made and has showed the significance the selected parameters.It is strongly believed that this index will help improve the ability of fire prevention measures in the Mediterranean basin area.

Association between meteorological indicators and COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan

“…The non-parametric tests (Spearman’s and Kendall’s rank correlations) were used to investigate the association between two variables. These tests were computed on ranks and depicted a monotonic association (Hamadeh et al 2017 ). Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient was used to investigate the correlation between meteorological variables and COVID-19 cases and infection rate.…”

Impact of wind speed and air pollution on COVID-19 transmission in Pakistan

“…The degree of correlation among environmental variables and COVID-19 was investigated using both Spearman’s and Kendall’s rank correlation tests. These tests were nonparametric tests, computed on ranks (Hamadeh et al 2017 ; Raza et al 2020 ). Spearman's rank correlation analysis used a monotonic function to find the correlation between two variables.…”

Influência dos Elementos Meteorológicos Sobre o Comportamento do Fogo

“…Estas observações variam de acordo com a localidade, enquanto na Alemanha, Holsten et al (2013) observaram que a variável meteorológica mais correlacionada com as ocorrências de incêndios, em 9 dos 13 estados estudados, é a umidade relativa e que a menor correlação encontrada foi para a temperatura máxima, no Líbano, Hamadeh et al (2017) observaram que a umidade relativa, velocidade do vento e precipitação têm fraca correlação com as ocorrências de incêndios, por outro lado a temperatura foi a mais correlacionada com as ocorrências. No Paraná, Batista et al (2013) também encontraram maiores correlações entre intensidade do fogo e velocidade de propagação para a temperatura do ar em comparação com a umidade relativa do ar.…”